Preternatural Parallax
by Byakugan789
Summary: Blatant, shameless Naruto Self Insert. Written in narrative and with an effort to stay believable in a world of magic. And don't argue with me, chakra is magic; a rose by any other name and all that rot. So this is me, a victim of the Q dropped into Naruto just before the coronation of Namikaze Minato, oh god, how will I survive?
1. Chapter 1

Alright, who here believes in polydimensional theory? No, seriously, raise your hand if you genuinely believe in that type of thing… That few? Wow, that's a pretty poor showing, and honestly, I don't blame you. Not one bit, I used to think Self-insert fanfictions were just as stupid, but well look at me now, Jonin of Konoha. What? You don't understand how I'm making that connection Kakashi-dono? I guess I better explain.

Hello, my name was John Grey, senior in college and when this story started I firmly believed that Naruto, the elemental nations and indeed the entire planet Kalin was little more that a badly scripted manga written by some guy called Kishimoto who had absolutely no idea what he had created. I read the manga, detested the anime and badgered fanfiction writers on the occasion I had a break from socializing, gaming and generally being a college student.

As things stood I was doing pretty well for myself; I had straight a straight A- average in my multimedia programming major, my bills were paid and I was busy heckling my Japanese American roommate about his use of The Q to write a Naruto Self-Insert fiction when it happened. I was holding the latest version of the encyclopedia of marvel in my lap and mocking Gennai on how closely most of his cast resembled one X-men or another when the world shifted. Everything around me seemed to melt and shift as if the world were a watercolor painting and some asshat had chucked it in a fountain. The desk dissolved beneath me and I fell on my bum, the book still clutched in my white-knuckle grip.

I appeared, sprawled on the grass, by the side of a dirt road and deep in the middle of a forest where the trees make the redwoods look like toothpicks.

"Shimon? Gennai? I really sorry for mocking you dude, mind if I wake up now?" I'm not sure if I really expected that to work but I sat there on the side of the road pinching and slapping myself and generally trying to convince myself this was some sort of sick dream or that Gennai had finally gotten tired of my teasing and just hauled off on me but the very real pricks of pain and feeling of hunger eventually got to me and I began to walk.

Now, let's get one thing straight first. I'm not entirely helpless on my own. When I was a kid my dad used to take me on camping trips constantly; I think he was under some kind of delusion about male bonding or something, but he taught me a lot about what was and wasn't edible and how to recognize general characteristics of plants and animal habitation. Eventually I came to a stream that ran through the woods near enough to the road that I could easily find my way back and I fished out a few frogs. I'd have gone for the fish, but the ones I saw were practically anchovies and at the time I was in no way qualified to catch them. Anyways, if you ever get the chance to eat a frog; don't listen to what anyone tells you, they don't taste like chicken. They're actually fairly disgusting, though I suppose it's likely an acquired taste.

When eating a frog or toad there are a few things you have to do first. In many cases amphibians secrete one of any variety of poisons or hallucinogenic compounds and that makes most people think that the creatures in general are simply bad news, but if you take the crown of the head and roof of it's mouth between your fingers and quickly twist it's head off you can peel off the skin and head, the two places where such compounds reside to begin with. Gods, what I wouldn't have done for a pot and some matches at that point… Moving on, I skinned and decapitated the little critters before placing them on a bed of washed leaves before proceeding to wash my hands and then the croakers carcasses. Raw frog is horrible to the tongue and upsetting to the belly, but if you want easy, healthy food and you're stuck in the middle of nowhere all I can say is go for it. Frogs and toads can be found just about damn everywhere and they do the job well enough.

I traveled along the road for the next two days before meeting anyone. Mostly I ate berries, the occasional wild vegetable I recognized and yet more frogs. By the time I saw my first local I was positively miserable. It was raining and I was using the large plastic cover of The Complete Marvel Encyclopedia as a rain shield when the ox drawn cart slogged it's way out from behind the trees as the road curved. I'm not even sure anymore what I expected to see, I'm sure I had some niggling sense of ironic premonition floating around the back of my head, but a bunch of Japanese people, three of them kids bearing Leaf Hitaite was not even in the top 100.

"Gaijin! Anata ha daijobu desu ka?" The youngest of the three stepped toward me and spoke in what was easily recognizable as Japanese. I thought about his words for a few minutes, trying desperately to work out what he meant. _Foreigner! Are you alright?_

I cursed quietly my lack of motivation to properly learn how to speak Japanese now. Beyond wanting to know exactly what Gennai was calling me whenever I got on his nerves I'd never really had a reason to develop the skill, after all, how likely was it that I was going to end up needing such a thing? No knowledge was useless was a quote I'd always been famous for around my home town, but honestly? Who expects to randomly be dumped in a place where you have no choice but to speak a foreign language.

Oh shit, the kid was talking again. "Um…" I said, "_Michi o… mayotte… imasu_. Konoha _wa… doko desu ka?_?" I said haltingly, wincing as I thoroughly butchered the language I was trying to communicate in. when they looked even more confused than before I tapped my forehead and pointed at his headband. "Konohagakure no sato." I said, a lot more clearly.

Their expression cleared up considerably and everyone tensed. I felt a small, but sudden heat near my back as the rain suddenly became lighter behind me and the dripping cold steel of a Kunai softly touched against the back of my neck. If this was anything like the Manga I was certain these people could kill my 17 year old ass without even breaking step and nearly lost control of my bowels, but thankfully managed not to twitch to heavily as the big daddy ninja appeared to take over the situation.

The voice that spoke, however, was not male as I had expected, but female and fare to fast for me to translate. I'm fairly sure she was asking something in relation to why I was looking for her home, but I honestly couldn't have told you. Ever so slowly I raised my hands and closed the book I was using for a rain shield and just as slowly turned to look at the woman. It took more than a couple seconds because when I tried to got too fast the knife she was holding on me with an utterly bored stare cut into the wet skin of my shoulder. The woman had white-blond hair tied back in an economical braid and some sort of black bandage thing going in place of a hat or bandana. The metal plate of her Hitaite was worn and dirty as it hung around her throat and her eyes were a clear blue-grey that in any other weather or situation might have been striking.

"Gomen-nasai," I said, softly, trying to keep the kunai that was now resting against my Adams apple from moving too much. "_Nihongo ga yoku hanase-masen._"

The woman rolled her eyes as if I had said something stupid and who knew, maybe I had. I know what I was trying to say, I suck at Japanese, sorry. The blood woman removed the blade from my throat and stowed it in a thigh pouch. Taking a step back the woman gave me a better look at her self as she began doing a series of hand signs. I recognized several of them as horse, tiger, snake, bird ah hell, she was going to fast and I was still in the process of accepting that this was even happening. I mean, think about it, it's impossible enough to randomly teleport to the middle of nowhere, but to a Japanese old growth forest where caravans are led by platinum blond Korean chicks who throws around gang signs straight out of Naruto? Shock's about the only thing that covers this sort of situation. That and wishing to wake up from this fever dream.

After a few seconds the toned, very well proportioned platinum blond in a rip off Lara Croft outfit, finished up her gesturing with what looked like a sort of double OK sign with the three remaining fingers on each hand spread out and my world grew fuzzy again. The jutsu she was using held my body rigid for several seconds before dropping me on the ground with a massive blinder of a headache. Presently I was picked up by my shoulders and placed on my feet again and the woman spoke again.

"So, this can end one of two ways, either I've fried your brain and we're going to leave your corpse on the side of the road, or you can nod and say yes mistress."

As soon as she let go of me my eyes closed and my hands went to my head. "Oh, kami, what the hell did you do to me?"

"I rewrote the language center of your brain kid. You're going to sound like a bitch for a while but you'll get over it eventually and I won't have to suffer through your butchering of a four year olds vocabulary. Now, what the fuck are you doing on the side of Konoha's main highway, and what do you want with my home?" The woman was a Yamanaka, good gods that hurt! She was blunt and to the point, a no nonsense kind of person and if it didn't hurt so much I think I would have liked her.

"I guess todays my lucky day…" I muttered. "I got caught up in a space time technique that went wide." I lied quickly, still in too much pain for the bullshit to be obvious in my voice or demeanor. "As you can guess I'm not from around here. Talking to the locals led me to believe that your leaf city might be able to help me get home, but as I haven't recognized any of the constellations the last few weeks I'm not even sure that's possible."

"Lucky huh?" she asked, slightly less gruff. "I'm not sure most people would think themselves lucky to run across a jonin itching to practice her counter intelligence techniques, but whatever floats your boat. Now, what do you want with my village. You've already figured out we probably can't get you home."

"It never hurts to try. The last village said that since the fall of Whirlpool, Leaf has the best Seal crafters in the world. Best I can figure right now is I find some sort of job and try to buy the services of a seal master. " I replied, shrugging, a lot calmer now that A) I could speak easily and B) was no longer being directly threatened with my life.

The woman looked at me for several long minutes before shrugging. "Whatever. We're on our way back to Leaf anyways, escorting these merchants. I guess you can come with us, but don't go expecting to get a ride or be protected if there's an attack, you're neither in the contract nor a Fire nation citizen."

The rest of the day passed slowly and I traded my assistance as a cook for food that evening. The conversation was fairly informative and I managed to get a sense of just where and when I was in Naruto land. This was the southern approach to the village from the city of Tsugoya. This was a high C, low B rank chunin mission to deliver supplies to Leaf and Yamanaka Tsuki did it fairly often. The kids with her were her Genin team from which two of her students had advanced to chunin and opted to stay with their lesser member rather than move on after their advancement a year and a half previously. The genin, Inuzuka Jiro, was enduring their heckling over his continual failure to gain some sort of advancement during the tail end of the third great shinobi war. They were talking in excited voices about their chances of getting back to the village before the fourth fire-shadow was crowned. This means I have a year, maybe two before the Kyuubi incident. Wonder if there's anything I can do to change it? Two years was enough to Naruto and Sasuke to become supersoldiers, maybe I could manage a wrench in the gears chunin? Assuming I even have chakra to begin with… that would certainly put a wrench in everything.

! #$%^&*()

We reached the Gates of Konoha two days later shortly after noon. The air was hot and humid in a way that sapped the strength out of the civilians and myself but seemed to leave the Shinobi untouched. We'd been able to see the gates since mid morning which should give you an idea just how big the fucking things were. Over a hundred feet easy and solidly built, even as we closed in on the monstrous oaken doors I wouldn't make out any deviations in the masonry that might indicate how they were put together. I thought about that for several long minutes before coming to the conclusion that it was likely created by an earth jutsu like the wood one the first had used to fill the valley with trees that dwarfed giants. Speaking of the forest, I noticed that the trees seemed to stop nearly a quarter mile from the stone walls of the village. It made a decent defensive strategy, but it did bear the question how naruto and company were always able to travel in and out of the village by tree when there was an emergency. Thoughts for later I suppose.

Tsuki took me aside as the gate guards began examining the merchants cart and papers, "This is as far as I take you kid. You shouldn't have much, if any, trouble getting through the gates but anything after I walk away is up to you. Good luck."

I nodded and thanked her, wishing I'd brought something of value like one of my circuit-board engineering or programming texts instead of the brightly colored book under my arm. I waited off to the side while the rest of the group passed through the gates, listening as Tsuki exchanged warm greeting with the chunins on duty. Here's hoping, I thought as I approached the gates. "Good morning fella's."

"Afternoon now," the green vested Asian said, grinning through a scraggly Fu-Manchu "what business do you have with Konoha?" he asked, talking in my torn cargo pants and black 'things we learn from video games' t-shirt.

"Immigration," I said truthfully "I've been rather abruptly dumped far enough away from home that I don't even know how to start finding my way home. Stories from the locals say you've got the best seal masters since the fall of Whirlpool so I figured I'd give it a shot."

"Why would you need a seal master?" the other guard asked, tensing slightly.

"High level shinobi battle cut through my city and I got hit by a wayward jutsu. Instead of dying I ended up 50 some miles from here in the middle of a forest. Considering I don't recognize the constellations or maps I figure my best chance of getting home is another ninja and rumors back home was space/time attacks means seal masters."

The pair of them nodded. "That's not strictly true, but yeah, seal masters and spacetime jutsu tend to go together. I assume by your story you don't have any papers or money?"

"I have a few, but I doubt they'd do any good." I said, slowly taking out my wallet. Opeining it I held it out and one of the Chunin came forward and took it.

"These plastic rectangles are your identification?" the shaven one asked.

"The first four, yeah; college ID, driver's license, movie rental card, bank cards and in the billfold is my countries currency."

The two of them looked at each other and shrugged. "Hitsuke, how's your chakra sensing?"

"Still need a bunch of hand signs, but I've got a pretty good handle on it. I guess you want me to scan him?"

The first guard nodded. "If he doesn't suddenly try to resist and attack us it'd be an easy way to tell if he's any sort of threat to the village."

I spread my arms like I was in the airport being harassed by TSA and the second guard began running through hand signs as he approached me. The jutsu, whatever it was felt weird as hell but at the very least it wasn't painful. Presently the mans stepped back and nodded.

"His chakra's about as strong as you'd expect of an academy dropout and there aren't any patterns in the flow that would suggest he's ever performed a jutsu. Physical stats read like a civilian; maybe a runner, but nothing impressive. His brain activity is fairly high though. I'd say he's clean. Threat level 7 absolute best."

"What's threat level seven?" I can't deny I was curious, after all, wouldn't you be?

"Threat levels one through ten. One is confirmed S ranked nin, ten is a civilian kid." The bearded guard explained. "Have a good stay in the village, traveler. Keep to public areas, don't cause trouble and don't harass the shinobi. Konoha's one of the friendliest villages you'll find, but we're still first and foremost a military installation."

"Duely noted." I replied nodding. "Speaking of which, how would I go about getting into the shinobi academy?" The two guards lookedat each other and broke out laughing. I frowned but allowed them to carry on for a minute while they calmed down.

"Wait, you're not kidding?" The bearded nin asked.

"Nope."

"Oh geeze…" he said, rubbing the back of his head "At your age… I don't know if they'd even accept your application… I mean, there are a fair number of chunin your age, but most gennin drop out and become civilians if they make it to 18 without advancing. Bit of an embarrassment for their teachers when they can't hack it, say nothing of the personal shame."

"Yeah," the other one cut in "I'm not sure your chakra coils could even expand anymore. There is a reason we generally start training kids around the age of eight."

"I'm only seventeen." I said frowning "And I can't see where it could hurt. If I'm that hopeless I won't likely make it past the academy and no one's the worse for wear. I'll be my money paying for it anyway, won't it?"

The guards looked at each other and shrugged. "I suppose you could go down to the tower and apply, but I think you'll need some proper money first. I'm not sure how things work with the academy. I know the chunin instructors get paid and I know the Hokage pays for orphans to attend, but beyond that our parents took care of the details and we haven't taken the post."

"I'd suggest finding a job somewhere and forgetting about it, kid. Shinobi's a hard life and more often than not , well, you sort of got to be born into it."

"Well, thanks for the advice." I said, my mouth a thin line.

Retrieving my wallet I made my way through the gates and into the city proper. Leaf is a big place, not New York City big, but the place still has 74 streets across, 30 from the gate to the monument and innumerable small alleys. The place is filled with parks and restaurants and I've counted nearly seven individual market places in my search for Ichiriku's Ramen stand. Much to my disappointment Old man Ichiraku wasn't here yet, two to six years from now he will be, but not just yet.

The first thing I decided I would need was money. Unless some random higher power was just going to toss me somewhere else like last time, my best chance of getting back was either by hiring a seal master, or joining the Leafs shinobi forces and becoming one myself. Both paths would more than likely require fair amounts of cash. Hiring a seal master to research the problem form me would require massive quantities of money and a lot of time during which I would still need to live, and becoming a seal master would require me to train in chakra, something I wouldn't likely just be given by the gracious fire-shadow, again, meant money.

Finding a pawn shop I traded the contents of my wallet for eight and a half thousand ryo, the currency of the realm. Now, at first this sounds like a lot, at least until you realize that ryo, like yen, is basically equivalent to pennies meaning I only really got around 85 dollars. For a bunch of novelty plastic cards, cloth bills nobody would exchange and a well-worn leather wallet however, that was pretty good. The pawn broker, Hitsuke Han, was actually impressed by the stitching on my wallet and openly stated such. That the guy stuck it in his own pocket rather than on one of the shelves as soon as I'd sold it to him is probably why he gave me so much.

Leaving the pawn shop I hit up one of the yakitori stands and pick of a few sticks of the grilled, salted chicken skewers for 800 yro. It tastes much better than it sounds, thought the salt content will probably get unhealthy quickly if I stay here long.

I walk through the market asking question about who's hiring at the moment and begin to build myself a list of options. The 'hidden' city of Konoha has over a dozen grocers who routinely hire low C rank ninja missions to transport in supplies needed to feed the village and are always looking for someone to stock shelves and run the register so that's an easy option if all else should fail. Of the seventeen munitions retailers; 9 wide spectrum ninja supplies, 8 specialty shops ranging from a shop that sold chakra metal weapons to a specialty sword smith and even one shop that sold nothing but trap and storage fuin, only five of them were offering positions for assistants. The man with the chakra metal shop had recently lost his son and shop boy to being a full time gennin with a demanding sensei and was offering to teach anyone who was willing to contract themselves to a long term position. The fuin shop was also looking for an inker but were leery about hiring someone they'd have to train from the ground up, preferring one of the many academy drop outs instead. The other three were general munitions shops looking for clerks; Not a bad gig, but no real mobility beyond shop owner there. I'll keep it in in the back of my mind.

Next one the list is restaurants. There are actually seventy two of theses in the city, not counting street vendors, and range from six large classy establishments for local and visiting wealth thirty or so small food stands that consist of a permanent open air kitchen, small apartment and bar or café area. Four of the six classy resturants were hiring waiters at the moment and one was looking for a new chef, but there was honestly little chance I'd get into any of them. I'm not a particularly good cook for myself, let-alone others. Don't get me wrong, I don't burn water like some people I know and I can make a mean spaghetti, but gourmet cooking is not my forte and a homeless shmuck is not going to be hired in a classy restaurant no matter how good they are. The midlevel establishments had a number of positions open though, from busboy to head chef, so there were plenty of options for me there.

There was also the avenue of public service open, though I didn't particularly relish it. There were, in Konoha, two civilian schools in addition to the shinobi academy. A K through eighth grade and a trade school, both of which were low on teaching staff and I'd been in college in my world for several years. Considering the comparable levels of technology I could probably make professor pretty quickly here. My rudimentary knowledge in electrical and mechanical engineering alone would be nearly invaluable in this type of society. The introduction of trains alone would completely change the dynamic of the elemental countries, say nothing of subways, guns, personal home computer systems, cars, air travel… it baffles me how these people can have standard issue squad radio headsets and operational genetics labs when concepts like electricity and internal combustion engines are mind-blowing to them.

Thing is I don't want to be these people's Henry Ford or Albert Einstein, as utterly cool as reading about naruto and rewriting his world is, this place is fucking horrifying to contemplate actually living in! Think about it, the place is basically feudal china with CCTV and super-powered-shock-troopers with major anger management issues. As cool as it is to think about mountain sized energy monsters capable of replicating the awe inspiring fury of nature when they turn over in their sleep, who in their right mind would honestly want to meet one?

Gods I need a piano… or a computer… I never did finish mass effect three… it's a strange feeling to know that such petty things make me want to cry right now. I wonder if I could get StarWars re-filmed here? I know they have cinema and recording equipment here… maybe I can use this as a chance to fix the plot-holes that mar that work of art?

But that would require reverse engineering the illusionary clone and several advanced genjutsu techniques on top of remembering what happened with sufficient detail which would require me to train as a shinobi and brings me full circle to the problem of money.

Shit.

There were numerous other options I could think of to gain a job and thus money, but the entire point of my many budding and convilouted plans was to gain access to seals to make my way home so there was really on one place I could end up choosing. Getting direction from several people on the streets with me I made my way to Naga Hanna's trapps, tags and pyrotechnics, the fuin munitions shop I had mentioned earlier.

I walked into the shop and a pretty Asian girl with straight lavender hair and a c cup smiled at me. "Hello, is there anything I can help you with today? You don't look like a shinobi, do you need a carrier scroll? We have a fine selection of low charge carrier seals available."

"Perhaps later," I responded, smiling as well and holding up a piece of paper. "I'm actually responding to your add looking for a shop assistant to make inks and write tags. Any chance it's still open?"

The girl looked slightly taken aback before shaking her head and answering. "Um, yes, I'll have to go into the back and talk to my father, he owns the shop. I don't recognize you from the village, do you know how to mold chakra?"

"Ah, no actually I'm from out of town. I have a steady hand and a fast mind though and I was hoping to find some work. I can't charge any of the fuin I'll be making, but I'm more than willing to learn and chakra isn't required to grind inks or ink fuin as far as I know."

"Ano… I'll just… go talk to my father. Please wait here, and don't touch anything." I put my hands in my pockets and she turned on her heel, heading for a door behind the counter. I stood there looking around at the various stacks of tags and trap diagrams and equipment positioned around the shop floor for a little over a minute before she came back with a tall man that looked like a wrestler who'd passed his prime with tanned swarthy skin, a multitude of scars and plum colored hair tied back in a braid. His face was distinctly Asian but I would be hard pressed to call him anything other than cool.

The bear of a man walked up to me and bowed very slightly. Remembering my many talks with other Asian kids on campus I bowed back, not heavily, but noticeable deeper than he himself had done. One of the tenants of Asian courtesy is that the deeper you bow to a person the more respect you are supposedly showing them. Bow at a lesser angle and you're showing them less respect than they are you, bow too deeply and you're suggesting your subservience to them. The polite thing to do is to bow slightly more than they do, enough to show that you are offering them respect, but not so little that you are suggesting yourself to be their equal. That's good among friends, but not when greeting prospective employers.

"So, my daughter tells me you're looking for a job?"

"Yes, sir. I feel I would be qualified to help you in any task that does not directly require chakra to perform and as I told your daughter, I would be more than happy to learn just how to change that."

The man nodded slowly and looked me up and down. "And why do you think I should hire you? You're not from the village and I doubt you have any references."

"Because I'm a steady hand and a fast learner, sir. Also I met Yanamaka Tsuki on my way into town, she performed what she claimed to be a counterintelligence technique on me and she and the gate guards declared that I was, at the very least, of no threat." I answered back with a wry smile.

Naga Laughed. "A quick mind and a quick tongue. You can start tomorrow at seven, learn quickly and don't make mistakes. I know Tsuki was supposed to arrive earlier today so go get yourself a room somewhere. Don't be late."

I thank him and decide not to mention my utter lack of funds for an apartment or hotel room and head for one of the public baths I noticed on my way over here. Paying another 500 ryo for a shower, launder and short lock up for my book, I get myself clean. Gods it feels good to be under hot water again. After half an hours wash I finally felt clean again and retrieved my freshly washed cloths from the hot rocks where they and several dozen others were drying. Grabbing my book I left the bathhouse in search or some essentials. Until I started getting paid I wasn't going to be rocking any sort of apartment and my new boss has told me to be on site at seven AM so that meant a clock and some place to sleep where I wouldn't be disturbed.

Hell, if I ever got back to my own world I was going to have to seriously thank my dad for literally beating camping essentials into me with his incessant father son bonding trips.

A quick chat up of the locals brought me to a shinobi supply reseller where I bought a one man tent, sleeping bag and a field alarm. Having completed my purchases I set off in search of a place to set up camp. I'm not entirely sure what Konoha's policy is on vagrants or if there's a population of homeless people here but sleeping on the streets isn't a particularly appealing concept and the sewer network, while theorized by many fans and authors as a place Naruto found safety, is not something I'm willing to suffer through. Setting up camp on the roof tops would have some potential in nearly any other city and I've seen it done in New York to fair effect of camps being built around heating elements, but this is a shinobi village and as such they are the domain of night time patrols making them dangerous more than convenient. The training grounds are a possibility, I suppose, what with the number of shinobi in the books who end up working themselves into a coma on their training fields I wouldn't likely be disturbed, but there's still the possibility of a wayward kunai or jutsu coming my way from some enthusiast's early morning workout. My final decision actually came from a funny thought about paying homage to Naruto himself. Naruto in canon and most especially fanon make sitting in the hair spikes of his father's effigy an important part of the boys comfort while they're busy abusing the character in their writing. Since the fourth doesn't yet have his head carved into the mountain and climbing it just seem over to the top to me I made my camp in the thick brush at its base. It wasn't difficult, due to a readymade animal warren trampled into the scrub. I'm not sure what used to live here but the tunnel was only just big enough to crawl through without getting seriously scratched and it ended in a nice bushy dome that hid itself from any overview. Sitting in there, clearing away the bones of small animals and setting up my tent I felt marginally safe and smiled as rolled out my sleeping bag. That this place reminded me of dad was my last thought as I lay down that night and set my alarm for 530.

! #$^&*()

Shinobi field radios are horrible things.

No, don't laugh, I'm being serious! Due to the need to be silent in enemy territory shinobi can't wake to a squawking or shrieking alarm like everyone else does. Despite this it's still often necessary to take solo missions where sleep is a sparse commodity and your waking up noisily is likely to get you killed so some brilliant engineer came up with a method of getting around that. The shinobi field radio works in much the same maner as a normal alarm clock in that it's a small box that tells you the time and can be set to wake you at a specific time, unfortunately the method this idiot figured out how to shock you out of your dreams is quite literal. A D class Raiton jutsu leaps out of the little box and shocks the shit out of the closest part of you, in this case, my foot.

Swearing softly, but profusely, I quickly pack up camp and stow my tent, book and sleeping bag behind a particularly thick piece of brush that has a convenient hole behind it and crawl out. Brushing the leaves of my tunnel crawl off of my cloths I head to one of the market areas to see what I can fetch for breakfast. I pick up a bowl of udon with half cooked egg drop and a pickle for 300 ryo. It tastes good, but the slimy texture of the partialy cooked egg that was cracked right into my boiling noodles is slightly off putting. I'd worry about salmonella but my roommate Gennai from back home used to do this all the time and say it was pretty common place in Hokaido where he grew up.

Popping into a small mom and pop boutique I check the time. Seeing 628 I start heading for Naga's. I remember the way and get there with 15 minutes to spare, but better early on the first day than late.

"Here, kid, start sweeping." I blinked, not even fully through the door as I grabbed the broom that was thrust into my hands.

"Well, I guess I did sign up to be a shop boy…" I muttered.

"That you did, kid. Just going to stand there?"

"Names John Grey, Naga-san. Where would you like me to sweep, the interior of the shop or the back rooms?" I asked the big man, who was still standing in my way.

"Already done with the shop Grey-chan, use the broom to knock the dust and cobwebs from the rafters and then sweep the street outside real quick. There's a ladle and rain bucket over there to keep the dust down. Hop to it!" Nodding I started and he stood there watching me. Once I was done he nodded and led me to the back room of the shop.

"Naga-san, why did you call me chan?" I asked a brow quirked.

"Because you talk like a girl, kid, did you only have sisters or female friends growing up, brat?"

"Ah, no. I grew up somewhere that spoke a different language. I learned this one from a girl while I was traveling the countryside, through."

Naga snorted. "Whatever, you still sound like a bitch." He turned away from me and began taking bundles of different herbs from the shelves and started showing me how to grind them for inks.

Japanese inks as I would learn over the next few weeks are made from a variety of ground herbs and flowers that are crushed into powers or oils of soy, tea, Tung and sesame that are then baked to ash in a kiln before being mixed with egg whites, tallow or fish skin until it's a thick, pliable dough. The dough is then labeled and dried into sticks called sumi before being sold to customers. When it is time for Japanese inks to be used they are ground against a stone tablet called an inking stone and the resultant dust is then softened into a liquid of varying consistencies with water, oil, or in the case of seal masters, blood.

This, as it turned out, was the meat and potatoes of seal making. Aside from blood there were a few other minerals or special plants that could hold and channel chakra properly, but blood was the best, the heart, if you will, of seal crafting. Leviticus 17:11 for the power of a creature is in the blood. Personally this makes me wonder why we can't just use blood as part of the original make of the ink. I don't know how many of you have ever dealt with large amounts of blood, but as it begins to cool off and or dry out the stuff gets pretty damn sticky and I have little doubt it could form ash into a fairly good ink dough. I'll have to experiment with that someday…

! #$%^&*()

Things continued in this way for three days before Naga came into the shop where I was roasting taro root for the particular ink ash used when painting on stone. "Come on kid, Coronation's in an hour, we're closing up shop for the event, you might as well tag along."

"Got it, Naga-san, just let me take these out of the oven… there." I opened the lid of the pot and looked at the crispy root. Shrugging I set the lid back down and removed my gloves. They'd need another half hour or so back at that heat, but I could get to that later. Removing my gloves I followed Naga to the large open area in front of Hokage Tower. Namikaze Minato was pretty much the entire town's favorite son and the square was absolutely packed as the entire village seemed to have tried to cram themselves into the square in front of the Hokage Tower.

It was interesting to say the least. Down where we were it was all very informal. Everybody stood in a large mob looking up at Sarutobi and Minato while street vendors moved through the crowd with boxes of freshly cooked food or heated sake, but up where the Hokage's were handing things off it all looked so formal. Not being a ninja I couldn't tell for the life of me what they were saying, but I'm sure from the stiff postures and smiling that it must have been very formal. Sarutobi stood up there, flanked by his team mates and two of his three apprentices. I frowned sadly at Tsunade's absence; Dan must already have died then, unless I see her wandering around town she's probably already gone off on her wandering sabbatical thing.

I wondered briefly how many things would change if I killed Sarutobi's other problem apprentice, Orochimaru. Admittedly his recent contributions may have saved the war for Naruto, but much of it wouldn't even have been necessary if not for him. Obito and that little shit Danzo, too, but of the internal problems Orochimaru was by far the more damaging one. Obito was still out in the wild being trained and healed by Madera, so there wasn't much that could be done about him, but of the two present dangers, only Orochimaru ever initiated mass murders against the village… Unless you counted Nagato… but pain made his own choices. With everybody conspiring to drive the poor kid insane it was bound to happen sooner or later and he already hated Konoha over the confusion with his parents.

The problem is how to kill the snake. Hopelessly paranoid as he is poisoning the little shit isn't a possibility and I'm nowhere near the level necessary to kill him. Shit, I'm just a civilian with a few days-worth of sealing knowledge, only way I can think to kill him is a gun, and where am I going to get one of those?!

…where indeed, I wonder, my mood darkening from contemplative to pensive. It's hardly as if your basic gun is difficult to make, I muse. A smooth metal tube, a wedge shaped lump of metal, a slightly smaller tube for a cartridge and a bit of the gunpowder that seems to be everywhere I turn in this place, then a carriage to hold it all together. Well, stock, but whatever. More complicated guns have upwards of a hundred precision parts and as a detailed schematic for a pistol danced across my memory I was sure I could make one, given enough time, but I'm also quite certain I'd never be allowed to leave if I completed it.

Still, the thought of icing Orochimaru with a sawed off, hollow point slug to the temple gives me the happies. I wonder if I could do it with seals? Use earth seals to form bullets and harden them into armor piercing rounds, a wind-fire projection chamber for propulsion, chakra strings to reload? The idea's got promise would certainly cut down on the moving parts and ammunition requirements… not very civilian friendly though. Then again, how many civilians can use chakra? Very few would be combat capable by inclination, obviously, but how many _could_ use it?

Oh, something's happening. I look up to the balcony again and Minato is taking the Hat from Sarutobi. As he promises to take care of the village as if it were his own I notice one of the jacketed shinobi standing behind him is Kushina. Long blood red hair tied back in a braid, an hourglass figure and the Japanese American face of an angel… even from a hundred or more feet away I'm blushing. Shit. It's not hard to understand why she's always a featured MILF in any fanon where she survives. Minato's a lucky son of a bitch. And that's a wrap.

As everybody begins to disperse I begin wending my way through the crowd searching for a particular head of platinum blond, but find myself disappointed; if Tsuki was here for the coronation she didn't stick around long after it ended. Shrugging I head back to the shop and fire up the kiln, I still have ground taro root to burn.

! #$^&*()

Slow and steady, my hand traces the seals of an explosive tag as if I was back in lab building a circuit board. It's tedious work but seeing the prices out on the store floor I can only salivate at the state of my potential paycheck. Naga Jiro picks up the tag I've just completed and eyes it carefully as I begin on the next one. He grunts and the tag begins glowing blue. This is as close as he's ever gotten to complimenting me so far, but I hold up hope; he's yet to turn down any of my tags.

"Stop after this one, gaki, I'm nearly out of chakra." I nod and continue drawing without pause, this tag will make 150, 150 is a nice round number. So is 75000 ryo which is what this stack of tags will be sold for eventually. Not that eventually is that far off, the way our customers seem to go through them I can understand why Jiro-san wanted more help. I finish the last stroke of the tag and stretch my arms back, popping my shoulders. A quick twist does the same to my neck and Naga takes the tag from my desk.

"Your weeks' pay is waiting on the counter," Jiro rumbled "I know you've been camping under the monument, get yourself an apartment and some real food. I'll see you tomorrow." My back stiffens. Damn, I had hoped to avoid notice, it's cheaper that way. "Go on, scat!" my boss says, noticing my hesitancy "I'm tired and these seals need to be primed wet. I'll see you tomorrow, and get some damned chakra training, you're practically useless to me otherwise!"

I leave, a small smile on my face. Naga Jiro's rough, but it's good to know he cares.

20000 ryo; two hundred bucks, thereabouts. Not bad, I suppose, I'll wait till I see what the rent is like before I thank the old man though. Checking the clock I see it's only four in the afternoon, too early for diner and, honestly, I'm not interested in scrounging for an apartment just yet. Instead I head for the Yanamaka clan district. It's a small place with only a dozen or so homes, no walls and a couple of family shops. The cool thing about it? The architecture and faces remind me of home. The irritating thing? They're almost exclusively blond… Don't get me wrong, I don't hate blonds, not by a long shot, but most of the ridicule I've faced over my seventeen years has come from hot blonds and I can't think of a Yamanaka who doesn't qualify.

Well, except perhaps the kids, I'm no pedo, but they're still blond and cute from hot blond parents and I feel totally justified being uncomfortable here. It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you, right?

Stopping in the clan head's flower shop; why a clan head would run a flower shop I have no idea, I walk up to the pretty blond girl behind the counter. "Hello, may I help you?"

"I'm looking for Yamanaka Tsuki," I replied with a slight bow "do you know where I might find her?"

The girl looks me up and down appraisingly, a dangerous glint in here eye. "The roses here really good quality," she said, dodging my question with a smile "what do you think? Red or yellow?"

"Um… yellow, I think? What says, please help me without being romantic or sounding desperate?"

"Hmm, in that case you'll want Laurel, red lily and oak leaves. The yellow rose probably wouldn't go amiss either… 750 ryo." She said, gathering up the mentioned plants. I sighed, this had **not** been my intention in coming here, but I suppose it's no worse than paying an information bribe and will probably help some.

I pull out the bills and pay her. "So, mind telling me where I might find her?"

"Training ground 13, by the hot springs." The girl tending the shop replies. "She'll be with her team until six if her boyfriend isn't in town. I think you're in luck though, Yamamoto should still be on his way back from the capital, wagon trains being so slow and everything." I nodded, feeling inexplicably crestfallen and left the shop. The hot springs are only a short walk away from the Yamanaka, which is convenient I suppose. They're owned by the Chikage clan, a small group of bloodline users Konoha stole from Kiri during the second war. They use a d-ranked boil release jutsu to provide a continuous flow of clean, steaming hot water through the baths which nets them a fairly steady income and acts as a chakra building exercise for their younger members.

As I walk there I ponder that. Boil release is an elemental aspect fusion between fire and water, but fire and water can also be fused to form a variety of oil and acid releases. Or is acid water and lightning fusion? Hmm…

Fire trumps Wind, trumps Lightning, trumps Earth, trumps Water, trumps Fire and so the cycle goes for the five primary elements.  
Fire and water fused makes things that burn like fire and yet flow like water; Oil, Boiling water and possibly acid.  
Fire and earth fused makes things that burn like fire and are strong as earth; Lava is the only one that comes to mind as canon, but other things like alkaline metals or burning metals come to mind. Possibly Cyclops force blasts as well, but that strikes me as a bit fanciful.  
Fire and lightning fused makes elements that burn like fire and are energy based… so… light? I think one of the data books might have mentioned blaze, but honestly that strikes me as wind/fire.  
Fire and wind ditto and so on, burns like fire and…what? Moves like wind? Cuts? Bludgeons? All examples I've seen of wind thus far it acts as an enhancer; allowing better control or stronger attributes. Fire and wind is blaze, scorch and smoke best I can remember.  
Water cum earth, flows like water, but with the strength of earth. Trees are the canon example here, but I think that might just encompass any plant manipulation. What else… glass maybe? It's a liquid, scientifically that is. Maybe liquid or solid crystal release as well? It would go with the interpretation that water is a growing element…  
Water and lightning claims storm release in canon, but honestly I don't see it. Wind, water and lightning, definitely; but just water and lightning? No so much. Acid works though, high energy reactions that flow like water and all that rot.  
Water fused to wind makes ice. Fairly logical there, water is cold, blow wind across it and it gets colder; magical logic easily makes the leap to ice. Add that ice shards cut like most wind attacks and you've got a solid. That being said, I also think you could get snow, water spouts and whirlpools from it. Uzushigakure was famous for its dual water and wind affinities and was well known for the whirlpools and hurricanes that protected its coastline. That could have been just wind or water attacks, but it could also have been a fusion.  
Earth mixed with lightning fused to form explosive bakudan bloodline and in the anime was responsible for the magnet release as well, though the data books place that as earth wind. Strength of earth fused to the high energy of lightning could also be the gravity release that the Tsuchikage and Pein played around with as well. It makes logical sense.  
Earth and wind in canon made sand and magnet releases. I'm not sure about the magnet, but sand I can understand. Hard as earth, and flowlingly moveable cutting like wind. Can't think of anything else that goes with the pair though. Dust of all ludicrous things was a triple fusion that added fire, after all.  
Lightning and Wind only make magnet in canon, anime or fanon so I have no idea what might go there. Static electricity maybe? Taking electrons from the world around you to fuel ration jutsu or make wide area electrical attacks? Or darkness perhaps? Taking the energy out of the air for a variety of purposes? Except the only darkness jutsu in canon is a clan ninpou of the Nara… hmm.

So that's fire, water, earth, lightning, water, oil, boiling water, acid, plants, lava, firestorms, laser intense light, storm, dust, ice, snow, explosions, magnetic fields, gravity, and sand so far.

My musings are cut off before I can get to triple or quadruple fusions by a sharp pain as a kunai cuts a small wedge in my ear. "OUCH!" I holler, clapping a hand to my ear and squeezing the damaged area. "DAMN IT TSUKI! Couldn't you have found a simpler way to say hello?"

"Yes." She said simply, smiling as she met my glare.

I give a loud, groaning sigh. "I suppose it would be too much ask for five minutes of help? This time I brought money and flowers?"

The kids behind her giggled at me. I'd considered glaring, but that typically only gets a stronger reaction from the receiver; I've had a LOT of practice with this. "You know I have a boyfriend right? He's a weapons specialist and sword smith for the Fire Lords court."

I nodded. "So your family informed me. Just as I was informed that this bouquet said please help in a non-romantic way." I said picking up the lily, laurel, rose and leaves.

"Mmm…" she intoned, sauntering over, hips swaying "Spirited dreams, ambition, friendship and strength… I assume you have no idea what these meant, did you?"

"I knew about the yellow rose," I said, shaking my head and Tsuki smirks.

"Well, it does say you're harmless and want me to make you strong, so you mentioned money?"

"Yeah, I thought I would ask you to do that thing from when we first met, where you shoved proper Japanese into my head; except I want you to make it as many chakra control as I can cajole out of you." I pull out a fraction of the bills I'd been paid for my work at the ink shop and finished the thought. "And I brought money this time!" I said with a grin.

She rolled her eyes. "well, if anbu hasn't carted you off yet you're either much better than what you're asking for or you've been dubbed harmless, so why not… what do you want?"

I grinned. "Everything you remember, preferably in order, about finding your chakra, getting ahold of it, the academies leaf floating exercise, leaf sticking, wall walking, water walking, chakra strings and chakra charging. Or as many of those as you're willing to do; I've taken a job at Naga Jiro's sealing and inking shop and he wants me to be able to start charging tags in addition to painting them."

Tsuki's students gapped at me and the woman herself snorted in laughter. "Why don't you just go join the academy, or ask one of the teachers for help?"

I rubbed the back of my neck with the hand that wasn't holding my ear closed. "Well, um, you see, about that… I went there a couple of days ago and they said I was too old."

Tsuki smirked. "They're not wrong. The chakra network forms when you're a kid and doesn't become fully functional until you're six or seven." Tsuki explained. "That's why we start kids at the academy when they're eight. From then until the age of twenty two a persons coils are malleable, but they usually settle into their perminant configuration around the age of twelve or thirteen only allowing for growth afterwards which is why we try to push them to become genin before then and choose the path their career is going to take for the rest of their lives. You've still got about five years to grow, but your coils are still a stunted civilians network so the chances of you being able to specialize in anything enough to grow into a useful and dangerous assassin are really pretty minimal. The quick bit of cash and amusement value aside, I really don't see why I should take the effort of teaching you, especially when I still have a student needing training for his chunin exam."

Now THAT was interesting information… not to mention, it would go a long way to pushing a children's manga into a real life setting. "Well, you gave me the language lesson in the first place because you wanted practice in some counterintelligence technique. Teaching me will give you a chance to refine your technique through repetition and focused information implantation. Surely that is worth a few minutes of your time?" I asked, smiling hopefully.

"Oh, god, it's like talking with that ass-hat Shikaku." She said, causing my mind to perk up with the reference to the canonical head of the Nara clan. "Fine! You three, continue what we were doing, I'm going to skull fuck this kid till he don't come back!" She turned to me with an evil grin and a shiver ran down my spine. What have I gotten myself into, I wondered, trying not to think about how a girl skull fucking someone was impossible. This is going to hurt, I just know it.


	2. Chapter 2

Odin, lord of the nine worlds, I hate my boss. When I came into work the next day nursing a hangover like I'd never had before, the damnedable bear of a man made an effort to not only be loud, but positively talkative! The only upside to this is that with my new ability to mold chakra my lessons are increasing rapidly.

Today is basic carrying seal matrices, theory and application. Now, on the surface, carrying seals sound like something that should take boat loads of energy and enormous, hideously complicated drawings and symboligy to create because the truth of what you're doing is forming a chakra barrier around a non-uniform object and shunting it out of phase with this dimension until such a time as you want to call it back. The application of this however is, more often than not, incredibly simple and not in the least bit chakra intensive. In fact, you can even use the same sealing circle to create a multitude of improperly phased objects that not only can be called back in any order the user desires, but follow the symbol around rather than being stuck in phase at the place it disappeared! And the worst part is, all you really need for a basic carrier seal is a circle and eight lines of instructions.

It's completely counterintuitive.

Magical even.

Basically, a wizard did it; I dare you to argue with me on this.

Naturally, even in magic there is a sense of logic to things, a dichotomy that I think comes from the interaction between the laws of the human mind and the laws of fundamental natural forces. The logic, in this particular case, is that more complicated containments such as Biju, chakra or quasi supernatural biological functions require more complicated and chakra intensive seals. In fact, even explosive tags are containment seals. The central symboligy of the tag is a chakra containment sunburst shaped seal, linked to a fire conversion seal and edged by a minor spherical expansion matrix.

Release chakra to fire and expand, make boom; get it?

And that's pretty much how most seals are formed too, with that simplistic logic. Which makes sense, since sealing script is a language of actions instead of words and the fewer motions you put into an act the easier it is to perform. The less that can go wrong…

Massaging my forehead I flick a chakra string out to grab another sumi and start grinding. My pathetic civilian reserves actually help in this as chakra is easier to control when possessed in lower quantities. I finish grinding a fair amount of dust into the ink well and pick up a kunai from the desk. Cutting my finger I allow a stream of blood to fill the well and stitch myself up with another string of cerulean energy. Note to self, learn healing jutsu at earliest possible convenience; not only would healing jutsu and seals be unspeakably useful in regular living, if carefully paired with a certain kinjutsu from konoha's favorite viridian maniac then a lot of barriers and limits to who I could talk to and how much weight my words would hold would fall away in short order.

But I'm getting ahead of myself; for now, I have 73 more small carrier seals to paint before I can go home.

! #$^&*()

I've now been in Konoha for three months and can tell you a great many things about it. The valley was first settled over five hundred years ago by the Rikudou sennin's great granddaughter and her husband Hachimangu, head of the senju clan. Also, the sea of trees here are not native, having been grown by the sages descendants among the senju clan as a means of defense, similar to a water user living near large pools of the stuff. The city also hold somewhere near seventy clans from across the fire nation ranging in size from a mere dozen members to groups like the hyuuga and uchiha who each have nearly a thousand members including civilians, elderly and children. Conversely the senju clan who built the village to begin with and conquered and or invited all of these other clans to join them thus forming the Very First Ninja Village nearly eighty years ago consists of one member and four branch families that have no more than two dozen members each, only half of which are even shinobi… I'm still having trouble accepting that one. If it weren't for the string of four massive wars the very concept of how small the founding clan is would strike me as absolutely pathetic.

And speaking of all things pathetic, I'd like to turn your attention to my current project: Konoha's public ninjutsu library, which is appallingly easy to gain access to. I honestly don't know why they even bother with the security chunin who play clerks here. Perhaps the lack is because these are the techniques we've stolen from hundreds of other clans and villages who don't reside here, or maybe it's because so many people shinobi worldwide know these scrolls; but gaining access to the scroll-racks and book shelves is a simple as having a leaf hitaite and walking in as if you're supposed to be there. Heading over to the chunin dozing off behind the checkout counter I ask for directions to sections on ninpou; ninjutsu theory, medical ninjutsu, Fuinjutsu and medical fuinjutsu. It's a lot of material to cover, but the thing is, I'm a nerd; what else would I be as a 17 year old college senior? I take notes on a rough map of the library the guy hands me from behind the desk and start my search.

I walk through the taijutsu section slowly, reading titles and ignoring practically everything. I'd tried, a couple of times, to learn various forms of martial arts over my life as a way to mitigate the general atmosphere of bullying I dealt with regularly, going for a sort of a 'geeks who gained power' motif. Unfortunately for me every attempt met with spectacular failure. I've always been long and gangly with bad kinesthetic co-ordination beyond hand to eye so the best I could ever have hoped for was 'hulk smash', a state I never reached the minimum muscle mass for in over a decade of effort.

Here, though, I hoped to find a solution. In the shinobi world to be taken seriously you need to be dangerous. One of the simplest and most common place measures any good fighter uses to judge others in this way is to look at the petitioners' body. Muscle mass, distribution, how they move; the professional term for this is hellstromism and is an art that all fighters practice and the Hyuuga clan claim to have mastered. For most people this is instinctual, fighter or not, and your basic predator/prey instincts will inform you whether or not the other person is any sort of threat. Thus why people will automatically clear the way for martial artists and big beefy bodybuilders; often without even realizing it, and if I don't register, I'll likely never get home.

Funny isn't it? To escape this world I've first got to immerse myself in it; and pray to Odin I don't lose my way…

It takes me twenty minutes to realize that Hachimon Tonko no Jin; being a kinjutsu, probably isn't in a place where it can be publicly accessed and nearly an hour of browsing to confirm it. Disgusted at the waste of time I leave the jonin taijutsu section and head for ninjutsu. Starting in the D rank scrolls I begin pulling scrolls on chakra theory and formation of ninjutsu, ninpou and fuinjutsu. It takes me a little under two hours to collect everything and I find myself facing two long lines of scrolls and books featuring titles like elementary chakra theory, Conduits: a medic-nin's guide to the chakra network written by Senju Tsunade, Signing: one hand or two?, hand seals: effects of focus, Hand signs and their effect on jutsu creation, Ninpou: art over element, Chakra Kyuin no jutsu, Shōsen Jutsu, Chakra no mesu, Chakra no Nawa, Ninpou: Sumi Nagashi, Ninpou: Kyokukan no chi, Ninpou: kegaretate no chiyu, Ninpou: zoketsu; and and incredibly dusty scroll labeled Ninpou: Chibunshin.

I've also taken down the libraries entire section on fuinjutsu consisting of nearly 30 books and two hundred scrolls, the largest chunk of which were actually written by Senju Tsunade during her full system renovation of Konoha's medical system. Honestly, when they said in the manga that the woman was scary brilliant, they really didn't do her any justice. Prior to her interest in the field medical techniques were almost identical to our world with the bare exception of chakra scalples, mystic healing palm and the shinobi worlds genius in the area of poisons and antidotes. Thing is, where most nin will invent three or four techniques in their entire career, preferring merely to take what others have done and use, or in extreme cases, refine it; Senju Tsunade invented over five hundred nin and fuinjutsu for both on and off the battlefield whose sole purpose was for healing people…

Just think about that for a moment.

Over five hundred individual jutsu.

From the ground up.

And to think I only saw a way to shot cut my physical training… which, ironically enough, is still my one, true, goal for my research into her work. It kind of shows how deeply one track my mind is.

According to the clock it is now 1837 in the afternoon, meaning I have roughly an hour and twenty minutes until the chunin guarding the place come to kick me out and potentially figure out I'm not supposed to be here. This is why I love Fuinjustu. While I can't slow down time, yet, or make myself flash level fast, again, yet, I can make copies of each of the books and scrolls I have on the table with me now. Among the many seals that I've been painting over the last several months is this nifty little matrix that mixes an ink ninpou and chakra based sensing technique similar to a MRI scanner tied around a fire conversion seal that quite literally reads any book or scroll placed within the katakana and rune circle and burns it into a prepared receiving scroll. As complicated as the seal sounds it's actually pretty simple to draw and VERY popular with espionage teams who have want to gather battle plans or classified scrolls for one client or other without tipping people off that there's been a theft. I'm packing a large scroll in a carrier seal that's been inscribed with my own modified version of this seal. Mine is more complicated because instead of simply duplicating the scrolls and books I'm stealing onto a book or scroll of similar size, I'm trying to put everything onto a big honking scroll that Kishimoto likes to draw Naruto carrying on a sling. With the differences in size and spacing I had to rewrite directions in a few of the katakana linking lines between each primary symbol.

Think Alchemy from the anime full metal alchemist, except instead of words, each letter or major symbol is an action rather than a word and the linking lines are all katakana rather than solid tracks of ink.

Thankfully, what I wanted wasn't too complicated. Instead of replicating a book or scroll straight out, each scroll was copied in sections the short way across my larger scroll before the chakra would move down enough to comfortably burn in the next group of lines or pages. If Asian people wrote like Americans, this would have been a problem, but thankfully this was another case where the idiosyncrasies of Asian culture helped out. You see, when an Asian person writes, they typically write top to bottom and then move over a line after they've finished a sentence. I'd found this infuriating two years ago when I first met Shimon Gennai and began trying to learn Japanese, but here it means I don't have to restructure sentences as well in the seals copying instructions, it just moves down to the next open space to continue the scroll to scroll copying.

I slowly work down the pile of books, trading them out and replacing them on the shelves as each one finishes copying. I'm done with the chakra theory and ninjutsu and working through the medical fuinjutsu when one of the security chunin ambles over. There's an obvious tension in his hand as he watches what I'm doing and I suppress the need to groan.

"What are you doing here?" he asks as he watches the larger scroll darken with a continuous stream of text.

"I'm working on learning fuinjutsu and don't want to put my studies on hold if I get done with a scroll while on a long mission." I offer, turning slightly so that my fake hitaite reflects across his face. He looks at me queerly, but relaxes.

"No vest so there's little chance you're a chunin. Nowhere near enough chakra to be a jonin. What's a 18 year old gennin want with a fuinjutsu library? And if you've failed to make chunin for this long, how can I be sure you won't lose the library to an enemy on one of those long missions?"

"One, I could have left it at home. Two, hey! Three, I'm 17, not 18 and if I get good enough at this I'm sure I can make that exam finally. As for losing it… thy this." I pulled up my sleeve and channeled a small amount of chakra to reveal a small carrier seal. Placing one of the scrolls on the end of row on top of it there was a small flash of chakra and both it and the seal disappeared. "Try to sense or take it. …Without tearing me a new one." I grinned as he didn't move. Unsealing the scroll I put it on the table and continued. "Assume you're a foreign shinobi, enemy or not. You know I have a scroll, you want it, you saw it disappear; what do you do? You're not a jonin, so you can't likely steal from me without being noticed, so you rough me up, search for the carrier seal, right?"

"Pretty much. Though if I didn't know about the tattoo I'd probably kill you rather than beat you up." He replied calmly as I changed to the next scroll.

"Erg, remind me not to meet you in a dark alley somewhere. If you killed me, though, you'd never get the scroll. I'm not sure how much you know about sealing, but the ink is mixed with blood before it's applied and if you're running chakra through it while tattooing then the seal becomes invisible without the users chakra to highlight or activate it. Personally though, I prefer the more complicated seal transfer technique, then I can just paint the seal somewhere and add a string of… you have no idea what I'm talking about do you?"

"A little. I've seen some of the medics transfer paper or painted seals to various parts of the body to help me heal after a difficult mission. It feels creepy a hell, like bugs crawling across your skin or something."

"Huh, seems like I've got a ways to go then. Mine still fell like they're burning when I move them."

The chunin nodded. "Hurry up with those, though, I came over because we're closing up in half an hour."

I smiled. "I'll try to have these all back on their racks by then." I replied nodding as he walked off. Oh god, ohgod, OHGOD! I dodged a major bullet there. This is going to be harder than I thought… I am so not cut out for this high stress reality. The powers are cool as fuck and steep as the learning curve is I'm still having fun, but damn if I didn't almost have a heart attack!

For the next twenty five minutes I copied scrolls almost mechanically as I waited for my heart rate to settle back down. Checking the clock repeatedly I worked through each scroll and book quickly as I could, returning them to their shelves and places as soon as they were completed. I was nearing the end of the list when I noticed the clock was at 1957. I waited a few seconds for the last book to finish and placed my hands on the big scroll. A small flow of chakra to my hands and the scroll rerolled its-self as if it was on a spring. Done, I swung the scroll behind me to rest on the small of my back and activated the carrier seal I'd transferred there. With a small puff of smoke it vanished and I regarded the six scrolls and one book remaining. With a shrug I picked them up and headed for the counter.

"We're closing up, genin, couldn't you have cut it any closer?"

"Sorry. I was wondering, would I still be able to check these out, or should I come back tomorrow?"

The chunin at the desk took one of the scrolls and looked at it. As he read the title his eyebrows rose, nearly disappearing into his hairline. "Shit, this is really advanced stuff. You an Iryōnin or something?"

"I'm working on it." I said truthfully.

"Papers?" I scratched my head looking confused. "You're not with the hospital then… In that case, leave them on the cart; you can look them up tomorrow."

Nodding I set them down on the cart and wrote a quick note of their names for capture later and left.

! #$^&*()

Kurotaski Tsuro's bar and grill is a wonderful place to get food late in the evening. Being an establishment run by, and catering primarily to, shinobi, old man Tsuro keeps the place running on three shifts and is open pretty much twenty four seven. It's a yakiniku joint which means, in plain English, that you order a steak, some chicken or a fish and you cook it yourself… right there at your table. Each table is equipped with a central grill, often filled with burning charcoal. Sometimes it's gas, other times its electric and since coming here I've even seen a couple that were powered by chakra where you set the heat by placing your finger into a divot in the edge of the grill and thought about how hot you wanted the grill and where the heat should be centered. When you order you walk up to the bar, hand over some cash and they give you a plate of your chosen meat, sliced to order and choice seasonings along with your preferred brand of alcohol. All in all it's a fairly swell place to go and the seats are always full of off duty shinobi.

This is a place I've come to enough in Konoha to actually be recognized, but even then I'm known as old Jiro's shopboy by most. "Hey, Nani!" I call out upon getting to the bar.

"The regular?" I smile and nod. The waitress, Pelekai Nani, is the primary reason I frequent this place and very beautiful. Her parents moved to Konoha from the southern islands near the tea country in the early years of the last war. She's 5'7", with long jet black hair that seems to glow blue when it reflects light. Her eyes are a dark green, almost black and her skin is a smooth creamy mocha that turns everybody's eye, even some shinobi who profess to be gay. Though that could also have something to do with the unusually wide nose, full pouty lips and perfect curves… oh yeah, I'm obsessed.

But not in a creepy way or anything; I'm not a stalker! Don't think that! Seriously, stop!

Moving on…

Nani come back with a bottle of cranberry juice, a tray of chicken breast, sliced to about a centimeter in thickness and this odd salty glaze I've become fond of. Sound's healthy, I know. I think it's made of chicken-stock, sea salt and something else, but whatever it is it tastes _**really**_ good. I hand her a few hundred ryo and a small tip, blushing as she smiles at me, and walk off to find myself a table. I find an empty one near the far end of the bar and sit down.

I'm biting into the first of four slices of juicy white chicken when my boss, Naga Jiro, slides into the booth across from me and steals one of my slices. He eats it slowly, looking directly at me, stoically silent for several minutes. "Where is it." He rumbles simply, stealing another slice.

"Would it do any good to ask you what you might be referring to?" I ask, trying not to sweat or sigh heavily. I snatch up the other cooked piece before my boss can swipe it and add another four to the grill while the last one hangs out of my mouth.

"While I appreciate your enthusiasm for what we do here, gaki, I really don't know why you continue to try and hide things from me." The bearlike Asian man said calmly, taking the basting brush from me and lathering the cooking meat with more of the sauce than I usually prefer. "You might be able to pull the wool over the eyes of a couple of lazy chunin who spent far too long trying to achieve that rank, but not me and certainly not the Hokage. You might be skilled at gaining the humor of a fair number of jonin, but it stops being funny real quick when the Minato-kun calls on me during dinner to ask why my shop boy is posing as a gennin to raid the shinobi public library."

I pale dramatically at this and swallow thickly. Where's my cup, I wonder suddenly, my mouth is incredibly dry all of a sudden.

"Yeah, you should be scared boy, this is serious business." He snorted and started in on another of my chicken strips as I wondered if this was going to be my last meal. Shit, I'm too young to die, my mind whines as I furiously try to think of some way to get out of this. "Luckily for you I managed to convince my old student you were there under my orders as part of your shop training. It helped that your theft of choice was fuinjutsu and you showed you were obviously listening to my lectures when you explained things to that numbskull, but I shouldn't have had to stand up for you in the first place. If I didn't want to break in another assistant I wouldn't have. And what were you doing there anyways, you great idjit? What did you think was so important in that library that you couldn't have just learned it from me when we're painting up orders?"

"Well, um, I came to Konoha because it was the only place I know of where I could learn about sealing. There's this, ah, project, I want to work on and I just wanted some study material so I could get to working on my own seals when I got off work." Then something hit me and I paused. There must have been some funny look on my face because Jiro was raising an eyebrow at me when my eyes refocused. "Wait, did you just call Namikaze your student?"

"Yeah." He said simply.

"But… I thought… Jariya?" I asked, confusion all over my face.

Jiro snorted heavily and got this sour look on his face. "Yeah, everybody does."

"But then… wasn't he Jariya's apprentice?" I asked, wondering if I was in some weird alternate dimension or something.

"Who do you think trained the boy before he caught the crazy perverts eye? He came back from some long infiltration mission in Ame and seduced my little seal prodigy right out from under me." He squinted his eyes and pointed a finger at me. "And don't go thinking you can just up and do the same. I may be retired and Jariya a legend, but there ain't nothing that peeper can teach you about seals that I can't do better. My finger prints are still all over every last one of Minato-kun's seals. Now, show me."

I unsealed my scroll and swung it up, over and onto the table. Jiro cracked open the front of the scroll and examined the revised printing seal, grunting occasionally as he bent down to examine each line of rune work carefully. "This shit ain't half bad" he said after a while "but you should be careful linking fire seals with parallel area codifiers," he waved to look closer and pointed at a line of text. "If you'd used Hiragana runes here instead of katakana you could have burned down half of the library. So, gonna tell me what this project is all about?"

I hesitated and considered what to tell him before my brain just crapped out. "I guess if anyone deserves to know it's you. Minato's going to die and I'd like to be gone long before it happens."

Jiro became very still. "Explain" the old man growled "and consider your words very carefully, for they may be your last."

I put my face in my hand and wondered what in the hell had possessed me to say that. It was true, granted, but of all the stupid things to say? "While I'm flattered that you're of the opinion I could do anything to the 'yellow flash', no. Just… no. Something from his and Jariya's past is coming back to bite him and I'd like to be back home long before it happens."

Jiro stared at me for a long time before snorting and shaking his head. "If you somehow manage to survive the year you'll learn not to joke about things like this, kid. Tsuki told me how you thought you'd been caught in some space time ninjutsu, but whatever type of crazy you are there wasn't a trace of one on you." He grabbed three of the chicken slices from the grill with his chop sticks and started munching on them in front of me. "I'm in the mood to be amused though, so tell me, how is my old student supposed to die? What eldritch horror from your coloring book is going to attack him?"

I frowned. Is it better to be thought crazy, or dangerous? Probably crazy, it's certainly healthier at the very least. Crazy people get locked up in hospitals, dangerous people just get killed if they're lucky. "You know that Minato's girlfriend is they kyuubi jinchuriki, right?"

Jiro who was drinking my juice suddenly spit the red liquid all over me. "_What?_" he hissed. "How the **fuck** do you know that?!" he asked, a kunai suddenly out and plunged into the table.

"I should probably start from the beginning, shouldn't I?"I asked, wiping my face dry and looking at the tag that was attached to the kunai. There was a wind seal on it, let's see, those markings are for sound, reverse barrier, power battery… a privacy seal? Noise canceling?

"You bet your ass you better start from the beginning!" he roared. When nobody appeared to notice or even stiffen to listen I congratulated myself on identifying the unfamiliar matrix.

"Round about forty years ago Jariya went to learn senjutsu from the toads at mount Myōboku because his best friend and rival, Orochimaru and gone to the Ryuchi caves to learn the same thing from the great white snake." Jiro's eyes bugged as I continued to blithely spill closely guarded leaf secrets. "While he was there young Jariya was told by the toad sage that he would teach the children of prophecy and indeed, ever since then anyone he taught has gained the power or position to change the world for good or ill. He's taken on several students and each of them has changed things on a global scale. For instance; his little charity case in rain took out Hanzou the salamander recently… right little bunch of revolutionaries those Akatsuki. Crippled Danzou too if my source is right."

"Where are you getting this information?" Jiro asked before pausing. "And I'm not ruling you being crazy out yet, either."

"Better me being crazy than you trying to kill me." I muttered, laying the last of the chicken on the grill and downing my juice before Jiro could steal it again.

"Anyways. Whatever it is that makes Jariya's students so special passed onto Minato and his own students. One might think it enough that the man became the world famous 'yellow flash', Hokage and is set to marry and start a family with Kurama's heir, but he also trained three more monsters with the same kind of power." I paused to brush out the last of the sauce onto one of the chicken slices. "First there's Nohara Rin, a medical ninja of some not inconsiderable skill, the girl became the sanbi jinchuriki for a time before gifting her team mates with the deeply forbidden mangekyo sharingan. It's kind of sad really, but really it just proves how the Uchiha are bad news."

"Wait, hold up. Nohara-chan is dead. I remember because Minato-kun and Kakashi-kun were really broken up about it. Their other team mate, Obito, was dead by that point too."

"Yeah, not according to my source, but I'll get to that, this is important. I'm talking single acts that ensure hundreds of thousands die screaming and millions more see their lives forever changed." Jiro rolled his eyes and snorted, indicating he thought I was being dramatic. "Rin, in this case had three. The first was when she saved Obito from being crushed in a cave-in and helped the Uchiha offer one of his sharingan eyes to Kakashi. Second, she proved that the death of a host won't destroy a biju, but rather release it in its colossal, wild form. And that brings us to the third thing. Obito survived that cave in that everyone thought killed him and got to watch as Nohara stepped into the path of Kakashi's chidori technique. Both Kakashi and Obito loved Rin, and with her death the two of them suffered the guilt of believing themselves responsible for the death of their closest emotional bond, thus granting the pair of them mangekyo sharingan."

"You can ask Kakashi about that later; he visits the memorial stone every morning to apologize to Rin and tell her about his recent goings on. It's giving him a bit of a reputation for being a slacker, actually. Anyways, Kakashi won't be doing anything earth shattering for a few more years yet, his growing reputation aside. The important part in all of this is Minato's other student. Contrary to popular belief, Uchiha Obito didn't die when his team left him in that collapsed cave. Rin's attempts to save him sustained the Uchiha long enough for Madara to pull him out."

"Uchiha Madara is also dead, kid." Jiro said, leaning back against the booth, his expression now firmly set to humoring lunatics. He had a flask of Sake in his hand now; I wonder where it came from, a carrier seal perhaps? The privacy shield is still up… "If you know about the Kyuubi you should know the red eyed bastard croaked in the same battle that gave us the beast."

"This is a magic world full of clone spells, get out of death free logs and sneaky, deceptive little shits, master Jiro-san, do you really believe it's that simple? On with the story though, Uzumaki Mito's shoddy seal work suffers a critical weakness during the hours of child bearing and in about a year Minato and Kushina are going to have a son who they're going to name Naruto after the main character in Jariya-senin's book. I'm not entirely sure how far he is in writing it, but it's practically an idealized autobiography and he finishes it shortly before Naruto's birth. No offense Jiro-san, but that's actually the event I want to avoid. You see, during the critical point of Kushina's labor, Obito is going to attack the birthing room and kill the midwives, including Sarutobi-sama's wife, Biwako. With that done he delivers Naruto, extracts poor Kurama from Kushina and sets him against the village in revenge for leaving him to die in that cave. A full twenty seven percent of the village will die in the attack, but Minato will be able to drive Obito off and he and Kushina will sacrifice themselves to reseal Kurama within their son, leaving him an orphan and jinchuriki."

Jiro snorted. "Well, gaki, you've certainly done your homework. Real imagination you've got too. Have you ever considered writing Horror stories?"

I stared at my employer for a long moment. "Well, I guess it's better than you asking if I'll quietly follow you to the psyche ward or T&I."

"Oh, believe me kid, I'm considering it; but as many secrets as you seem to know, you've got more wrong. Stuff I'm certain of. Now, come on. You've got work tomorrow. Off to that ratty old apartment you insisted on. Scat!"

! #$%^&*()

In old Greek myths there was a woman name Cassandra. Favored by the god Apollo she had the gift of prophesy, a gift that was so strong she could accurately predict events down to the man and the time of day in which things would happen. She would record these prophesies into leaves which would sing tales of future tragedies but when she tried to warn people of what was coming, nobody would believe her. There were a variety of explanations as to why, but none of those are important. What is important though is that one string of her many visions she saw the burning of the city of troy to which her mother and father were king, but her family refused to listen to her prophesies until many of the prophesized events started to come true before him. These visions of the future saved the people of troy, but the city was lost and the kingdom never truly recovered.

That tale has been repeated in the mythos of many countries, both before and since, and now it was happening to me. For Cassandra and her ilk it was considered a curse, but me? I'm just glad my big mouth didn't get me killed; though Jiro and Nami are now insisting I entertain them with more stories. I've told them of what I know of the Naruto manga, something they criticized repeatedly, nearly recited George Lucas' nine star wars novels and I'm currently working them through the various tales of the avengers. Nami has taken to interrupting me by mentioning the Raikages son A every time we touch on Hulk. Honestly it's all a difference of color, the calmed hulk of later stories has a very similar personality and intelligence from what I've worked out. He's quick to rage, has a frighteningly brilliant mind and is **big** on the smashing of… well pretty much anything. He's also got wolverine's gruff soft spot for children.

"So, you're saying that this phoenix, illustrated here, was creating bloodline users all over the planet at random?" Nami asked, fingering the image of Jean grey. "For what reason?"

"The phoenix was the embodiment of the universal concept of rebirth, death of the old, giving way and nourishment for life anew; but it was trapped by an ancient alien race that wished to use it like a jinchuriki. Its final act in freedom was to destroy the race that sought to control it and the mutants were its attempt to free itself so that it could continue bringing life to dying worlds. The phoenix created many mutants, or bloodline users as you say, of ever increasing power, searching for one strong enough to escape through." I tapped the page where it showed the burning Jean Grey. "She was one of the few that could ever handle the phoenix's power without destroying herself, but even she wasn't strong enough to truly release it and she could destroy entire worlds." Nami smiled at that, enjoying the idea that there was a world with so many strong women warriors.

Nami has been opening up to me as of recent; especially since I left the Marvel Encyclopedia out around a month ago. Nami is a seal mistress and medic who spends her time helping her father paint and design trap fuin and occasionally volunteers at Konoha General Hospital overseeing their trickier seal work. Unlike many children of retired shinobi she never officially joined or trained in the armed forces, but that doesn't make her any less dangerous. Her idol of idols used to be Tsunade-sama, but she's told me that since the woman's breakdown and sabbatical her dream has changed simply to that of an idealized kunoichi; beautiful, confident, seductive and powerful enough on her own merits to go toe to toe with biggest names of this world.

In my own, slightly biased, opinion, she's not far off.

Where Jiro's hair is plum in color and always braided, Nami's is a solid lavender and I've never seen it anything bug long and straight. Asian and beautiful looks like Inuyasha's Kagome in that kimono she wears more often than not. The Kimono, I've learned, is to hide a large collection of Fuin which, as she's explained them to me, could very easily make her a jonin should she ever choose to make it official. She's let me see several physical enhancement bindings, a chakra battery and flow regulator and a couple of bars on her forearms that replace the need for hand-signing on a number of jutsu; though she won't tell me which ones.

That actually brings me to my own current project. I've spent the last month studying fuinjustsu in general and Tsunade's work in specific and I think I've got something. Medical justu is, in basic, an elemental aspecting of chakra towards Yang. In Naruto-verse yin-yang elemental releases, dark natured Yin creates form from nothing while light natured yang provides the breath of life. Since the introduction of external chakra use, supposedly by the sage of six paths, medically inclined shinobi have used Yang release to enhance their bodies ability to heal with specific jutsu and medial knowledge being used to direct the energy to where it's most needed and show it what to do so that it isn't wasted, weakening the user unnecessarily. Any unskilled medic can be taught to aspect their chakra as yang and pour it into themselves or their team mate, healing them, but this is where the phrase, performing open heart surgery with a hammer was introduce to the shinobi world. Why exhaust yourself over a cut when a little control can have you replacing limbs?

Naruto, though, does both.

You see, when Minato used the dead demon consuming seal the great prat tried to split Kurama in half in a deal with the Shinigami to protect his son. As part of the deal he aspected Kurama's chakra into Yin and Yang then took 90% of the yin and put he rest of the yin and yang into that funky spiral chakra battery on his son's stomach. Because the seal is designed to enhance its bearer by slowly integrating the stored chakra into the normal users normal flow Naruto's body has been flooded with healing Yang energy practically since the moment he was born. Will be born… would have been born? The tenses are confusing at best.

The point of all of this is that the seal I'm designing will do pretty much the exact same thing.

Imagine this: Chakra capacity is built by using chakra and then allowing your coils to heal from the use, expanding them and reconfiguring the mitochondria for a slightly more efficient or active mixing of whatever energies are used to make chakra. The eight gates control the amount of these energies that are allowed to flow through the body so that the forces involved down tear apart their own housings. But what would happen if the energies being mixed were actively repairing the body as they occurred? Opening the gates would still likely cause the body to tear itself apart after a certain threshold was reached, but the limit would be much higher and would climb much faster. It would be, by no means, a DragonBallZ instant power up; but achieving jonin or even kage level speed, strength and chakra capacity would take months instead of years or decades.

The seal I'm designing crosses the line between Tsunade's diagnostic fuin and a full body physical enhancement matrix with the center piece being an elemental conversion seal set for yang release. It's a lot like my multimedia programming finals actually, except instead of coding physics engines, messing around with wire frames and drafting skin brushes I'm binding the elemental forces of reality to picto and logo-grams.

…Oh god, I'm going to die.

Really though, it's not that bad, most of the work has already been done for me, I've just got to integrate it all into a single consolidated form, something Jiro's increased lessons and Tsunade's own notes and explanation on the scrolls are helping with immensely. Even so, it's still been two months and I'm only a little more than half done. Of course, replacing speed, strength, durability and reaction time enhancements with diagnostic fuin for genetics, cellular biology, detailed organ structure scanning and musculoskeletal readouts them bind them all to a stolen puppet repairing technique and power it all with a yang conversion seal instead of straight chakra isn't as easy as cut and paste.

What I'm trying to do with all of this is direct the energy to seek out and aid the body's natural healing processes without accelerating cell division beyond the norms. Tsunade may be able to heal herself young whenever she needs to, but I'm not anywhere near that good and don't have a decade or two to get there. Priorities, you know?

! #$^&*()

I stroll slowly through Konoho'a primary clothing market with a heavy heart. My cloths, the ones I brought with me, have finally worn themselves out. I've been in Naruto verse for nine months at this point and studying Fuinjutsu for five of them and it's looking more and more like I'm going to be stuck here. Space time jutsu is either a rank kinjutsu and practically impossible for a shinobi to obtain (say nothing about a civilian) bloodline specific or devoted to the realm of summons. Heading for toad mountain or the Ryuchi caves might work, but finding them will be a bugger and a half.

I finger a red silk shirt with tangs and think about Ranma ½. With a small chuckle I move on, striving to be the best at what I do, perhaps, but I'm no martial artist. Though if, as things are beginning to look, I'm going to be stuck here that may yet change. I walk through a section of Hakama and smile slightly as Inuyasha comes to mind. I wonder briefly if it would be worth it to try getting an Inuzuka hooked on swords just so I can call him that. The look would never work for me though, an American in a traditional Japanese clothing? I'd look ridiculous.

…then again. I finger a long hooded brown cloak. Jedi robes have often been called Kimono rip-offs. I shake the idea off, but still can't refrain from grinning. I feel a plot brewing… I quickly grab a set of dark blue cotton tangs and a tunic, make sure they fit and leave the store, heading for my apartment.

Arriving in my living room I pull out several of Jiro's books on sealing, a scroll and inking set. Setting them on the table I head for the kitchen and grab a knife. Grinding some ink I slice open my thumb and bleed into the dust, mixing it with my brush until it's the right consistency. Finished, I sew up my thumb with a chakra thread start painting. Occasionally looking at the books for one reference or another I slowly pull together a small bar shaped seal that projects elemental chakra in a bar roughly three feet long. On second thought I put it off to the side and rewrite one for three inches. My chakra reserves have been growing steadily since that mess with Tsuki but I'd probably exhaust myself trying to create a full sized energy blade. Feeding a fair amount of my chakra into the drying image I grin as a light red line of energy forms just past the edge of the seal. There's no flame, but the paper and table are beginning to smoke so I let it go.

Grinning madly at my success I quickly redraw the seals substituting the fire conversion seal for air, lightning and then earth respectively. Air and earth both create semi solid areas of light while lightning feels like those plasma balls that used to be popular a couple of years ago. Overlaying the air and wind seals creates a blowtorch blue flame that sets the table alight. Swearing, I stop feeding energy into the seals and slide the inkbox over the area, pressing down and smothering the flames before the can become a real problem. Learning my lesson from that little bout of idiocy I trim the paper till only the seals remain and then place the four of them together, their ends pointing into the air. Channeling more of my power into the four combined strips I grin as a bar of light the size and shape of my finger appears at above my hands.

"Wicked" I breathe, basking in the heat of that cherry glow. I've just created a light saber.

Fire to burn, wind to cut and strengthen the fire, lightning to pierce and elevate the energy present and finally earth to give the blade substance so that it's users don't have to _completely_ relearn their sword skills.

Now all I need is chakra metal.

! #$^&*()

After work the next day I went down to the chakra metal weapons shop and purchased a small 8 inch rod or the strange bluish chakra conducting metal and nearly choked on the hearing price. Nearly a months' pay for 7 cubic inches! And the mental hadn't even been worked beyond the initial refining process! Maybe I should have become a shinobi instead? D rank missions were apparently 5000 ryo a pop; two or three a day and I'd be making upwards of seven times as much as I did now, even without better ranked missions.

Resigning myself to eating cheap food at home for the rest of the month I paid the man and took my metal, briefly charging it to make sure it was, indeed, chakra conductive metal, the regular stuff was fairly resistant. Immediately the metal felt light as air and twirled around my fingers as if it was actively responding to my will. No wonder Asuma likes this stuff.

Taking it back to the shop I rummage through the tool cabinet and eventually find the engraving knives.

A engraving knife is a small blade that look similar to fountain pen. Back in our world they come in three varieties, acid etching, soldering or electrically heated knives and flame heated varieties. I've watched, on one occasion, where a man with a propane torch and engraving knife took a cylinder of glass and in three minutes crafted a small owl figurine in the middle of a mall by using the torch to heat the glass and knife while subtly teasing it into a distinct head, wings, feathers, clawed feat and eyes complete with sockets. To say I was in awe of the mans skill was appropriate and I promptly bought the piece which cost me four months of my meager savings. Since we don't have the acid or electrical varieties here I'm going to be using the fiery version, assisted, of course, by seals. While the shinobi world hasn't yet progressed to the industrialization needed to commercially produce natural gasses, Master Jiro's pen is inscribed with a fire conversion seal to heat the blade to a brilliant white without the damn thing falling apart or bending.

As I channel chakra through the seal to prep the blade I search for, and retrieve, a pair of sun glasses and kiln gloves. Pulling out the seals I'd drawn for the three foot blades I laid them out on the table and set to work. It took me a hour to carve each of the four seals into the rod and I had only started on the second one when Jiro and Nami walked in. Both of them were silent as they watched me work, though Jiro hovered over my shoulder, examining my work. As I finished the third seal the pair of them took the discarded papers and examined them together, talking quietly together before heading over to the chalkboard on the back wall.

By the time I'd finished there was a small cloud of chalk dust behind me and the two of them were looking rather pleased with themselves.

"I gotta say, kid, that's pretty ingenious."

"I'm sensing a but here." I said tiredly. "Should I even bother lighting up?"

"Absolutely" Jiro replied. "As I said, it was ingenious. I suppose you were trying to make the 'light saber' you described to us?"

"Yeah" I replied, pouring chakra into the metal and smiling faintly as it lit up in a beam of nearly solid blue-white fire. "You'd shown me how to make barriers last week and so yesterday I figured, why not make one to imitate a sword, but fill it with elemental chakra. Then I got to thinking about what the various natures would do and it just came to me. Light sabers are supposed to be solid blades of energy that burn so hot they can cut into or through anything, so, burning, cutting, piercing and solid; fire, air, lightning and earth. Add to that fire can be enhanced by air and lightning natures…"

"It was, is, a fascinating idea," Nami said, nodding "But your shaping words are sloppy, the barrier is ill defined and leaks heat everywhere, it could do with a chakra battery and setting the seal up as four individual markings wastes a lot of energy you could save by having them all in a single consolidated marking. …unless you were wanting to be able to single element blades or limited combinations" the girl continued, voice suddenly rushed and excited as she began drawing quickly on the chalkboard again. "Look, see here? These marking act like buttons or switches."

Cutting the energy to the rod, I approached the board and examine the marking the 19 year old was pointing at. Damn I have a long way to go. "I don't suppose I could get you to hold off on selling this, could I? I mean, as much as the concept's mine, you've upgraded it so much in an hour that I only vaguely recognize the seal and really have no claim over it."

"I suppose that depends on what you intend to do with it." Jiro asked, his humoring children look firmly in place.

"I was trying to design and refine the rip off lightsaber so I could use it to bribe the Hokage." I said bluntly.

Jiro pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed heavily. "First, why; and second, yes this one" he tapped his and his daughters work on the board "could defiantly bribe Minato, if you don't ask for anything stupid. He's been struggling to convert that Rasengan of his to an elemental attack for months."

I waved a hand dismissively. "Tell him to add a shadow clone to the effort until he gets used to the justu, if he's going to use wind though, I'd caution him to learn only with shadow clone until he can throw it though. That many conflicting wind blades will tear up his arm like a meat grinder before he throws more than two or three. As for why I want to bribe the Hokage, I'm trying to get the Hachimon Tonko no jin, but I've been having trouble pinning Maito Gai down and the damn thing is listed as a kinjutsu so I can't just pull it out of the library."

The old man sat down fingers massaging his temples. "You're not a ninja kid, and the hachimon is only a kinjutsu because most who use it end up killing themselves during training, never mind getting to use it on the battleground. And why would you want a suicide technique anyways?"

"It, ah, has to do with the reason I broke into the library." I said with a weak grin. "See, the only way I can think to get home is use another space time jutsu to get across dimensions and to do that I need to either find and learn a dimensional jutsu, make one as a seal master or visit one of the summoning sages and get them to help. For any of those I'll need a massive chakra battery and probably a good physique as well. I've been designing a full body healing fuin and if I use it with the first seven levels of the Hachimon I can cut the time I need to get there from decades to months."

The pair of them were staring at me, dumbfounded. When they didn't speak for several minutes I began to grow uncomfortable and fidget in my seat.

"For someone who's trying so hard to leave" Nami spoke up quetly "you're well on your way to becoming an irreplaceable village resource."

Jiro nodded absently, one hand moving to cover his face and the other held out palm up and making a grabbing motion. "Indeed. Give me what you have so far. It's best I check your work so you don't kill yourself first time you use it."

I hesitated. "You'll get me the Hachimon?" I asked.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll take you to meet Gai tomorrow. I warn you though, he's… exuberant."

Reaching behind my back with both hands I hit the seals hidden there and pull out two massive scrolls. Unslinging them I stand one up beside the table. "This is the library scroll, It's got a lot of my notes, but this" I slung the larger of the two scrolls up onto the table "Is the scroll where I've put most of the works in progress. You'll want to scroll about a third of the way down the length to find my most recent design. It's nearly complete, but I'm having some trouble linking the genetic diagnostic to the repair jutsu."

As the pair of them bent over my scroll on the long work table I took out a piece of paper and began copying the updated light saber model. Nami's idea for a 'button' fuin was interesting, but I preferred the simpler one she'd shown me first. It took me about five minutes to copy the seal in as exacting detail as I could before blowing on the page to dry the ink.

Rolling the paper up I put it on one of my wrist seals and made it vanish before returning to the table where Nami and Jiro were muttering over my work.

"So, what do you think?"

Jiro scratched his chin and Nami messed with her hair a bit before Jiro spoke up. "It's not nearly as bad as I'd though. You've obviously been working on this fairly diligently. The problem you're having linking these together is you're trying to power it with yang chakra when suna's puppet repair jutsu is built for your standard fare."

"Yeah, but look here," I pointed to a collection of symbols "I've already solved the conversion problem, where I'm worried is this set of linking words here." I pointed to another line of Katakana.

"Hmm… that does seem to take care of things… a bit rough though, you used Sarutobi's algorithms I see. Nakamura's abjuretive would have been better though. The big thing though is you're still trying to over simplifye things. If you used an eight point binding sequence you could add a chakra battery here and still have room to add a few physical enhancement like earth spear armor or sensory enhancements."

"Well, what would you suggest?"

"Be patient a few days and I'll help you combine these diagnostics into a comprehensive monitoring technique. Tsunade sama did it once, but felt that they were more useful separately. Then we'll have room to add in the vision enhancer off the shelf on the far wall; Nami? " The girl nodded and rushed off to grab the paper. Jiro was muttering to himself as he went over to the chalk board. "You have these copied?" he asked. I nodded and he wiped the board clean with a gesture and began drawing again.

After Nami returned with the telescope seal tattoo paper I found myself pretty much shut out from the board by the two muttering seal masters. It was fairly humbling to watch them work to be completely honest. Never before have I met something written I couldn't master and then follow or expand upon, and yet here were two people to whom my work of months amounted to a child's scrawling in a coloring book. My work may be revolutionary, perhaps, but for all the lack of precedent, in professional circles it was still only crude.

Shaking my head I grabbed the engraving knife I'd been working with earier and went to work smoothing out my earlier work to start over again. I had a light saber to retool.


	3. Chapter 3

Ah, Authors notes, I hate writing these things. It makes me feel like I didn't do a good enough job in the story itself. In this case it's the problem of anonymous reviewers, thuogh I suppose that's my own fault for leaving it an option… See, the horrible thing about anonymous reviews, is they always say something you want to respond to.

To reviewer 'Lost': Seriously… you're worried about what a master swordsman might do waving around a lightsaber, when placed beside a fuin that applied to a academy nobody could have them at jonin speed, strength and chakra capacity in just under a year? In all honestly, I don't see where a lightsaber will really be a game changer. Throw around a couple of gang signs and you can launch a fireball that flows straight over the lightsaber and turns the user to ash for the same amount of chakra. What really makes it dangerous is that it'll cut through anything with a lesser charge to it. That being said pretty much any REAL shinobi swordsman isn't going to notice the change all that much because THEIR swords have some sort of enchantment on them and a bright glowy sword is a big target. It's like giving Naruto the rasengan or saskue the chidori, anyone stupid enough to get hit with it is going down, but against any competent shinobi, big whoop.

! #$^&*()! #$^&*()! #$^&*()! #$^&*()! #$^&*()! #$^&*()! #$^&*()

"Somebody said that it couldn't be done;  
But, he with a chuckle replied  
That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one  
Who wouldn't say no till he'd tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin  
On his face. If he worried he hid it.  
He started to sing as he tackled the thing  
That couldn't be done… and he did it."

"Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you'll never do that;  
At least no one ever has done it";  
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,  
And the first thing we knew he'd begun it.

With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,  
Without any doubting or quiddit,  
He started to sing as he tackled the thing  
That couldn't be done, and he did it."

"There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,  
There are thousands to prophesy failure;  
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,  
The dangers that wait to assail you.

But just buckle it in with a bit of a grin,  
Just take off your coat and go to it;  
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing  
That "couldn't be done," and you'll do it."

By Edgar Albert.

! #$^&*()! #$^&*()! #$^&*()! #$^&*()! #$^&*()! #$^&*()! #$^&*()

A teenaged Maito Gai is a sight to see, I can tell you. He's just a ludicrous as the thirty year old one and a dozen times more hyperactive. Clad in his trademark forest green leotard and covered in muscles that poke out of his skin tight uniform in ways that I swear are indecent; the man is moving through Katas and imaginary attack simulation with himself so fast that he's a blur and spouting a running commentary the entire time, though for whom I can't imagine as he doesn't appear to have noticed us yet. Of all the things I have seen since coming here this easily rates among the most surreal. I idly wonder how long it will take for my perception of reality to sque to the point where this seems tame?

"I've read the manga and watched the anime," I breathed "but I never… is he always like this?" I asked Jiro, turning to the older man, stunned.

"No…" Jiro sighed "sometimes he gets weird." The plum haired shinobi flashed through a series of hand signs and stomped on the grassy floor of the training ground. The area shuddered and rippled before patterns sunk themselves into the landscape and Gai slowed down to normal human standards of movement and speech. "Something to keep in mind when you go for your elemental affinity, sealing is determined by the shape in which your chakra moves. If you can engineer a jutsu that forms the lines of a seal you can circumvent the need to go painting them everywhere. Just understand that these will be directly powered by your chakra and won't last more than a few minutes at best."

I nodded, but my follow up question was interrupted by the Jonin we'd come to see. "Hail, friends, I do not know what warranted this jutsu being placed upon me, but it is most unyouthful!"

"And hail to you, Beast." Jiro replied with a strained tone to his voice.

"Jiro! My most youthful friend and grand-sensei of my eternal rival! Have you come to join me on this most glorious day?"

Jiro ignored this and glared at me as I was beginning to crack up. "How are those new weights working for you, son?"

"HA! I have upped their limit five times since we last spoke, friend Jiro! A finer sealing I could not find!" Then the bowl haired Jonin noticed me. I wasn't sure what he would think of me to be honest, I was shaking with suppressed laughter and I was utterly failing to contain a grin. "Ah, but who is your most youthful friend? Surely he seems overcome by the power of my youth!"

Oh, god, don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh! "I am Grey, John. How are you, Maito-san?"

"I am well, Grey-san!"

"Maito-san," I started "I found your earlier display to be most youthful, but I was wondering if you could tell me of the eight celestial gates?"

The switch in the other teens demeanor was as startling as it was swift, one second he was a jovial, comical really, sixteen year old, the next he was standing only feet from me his thick fuzzy eyebrows knitted together and looking as serious as a heart attack. "That is a most dangerous technique you speak of" he said evenly. "Most youthful, but ever the more dangerous for it. What would you, a civilian, want with it?"

Jiro clapped a hand on my shoulder and spoke up; evidently believing he needed to save me from doing something… stupid. "My shop boy has heard tales of your power using it and believes he could make a seal so that it would not be so unyouthful. I have seen his work and hold much hope for it, Gai-kun, but to finish it we must know how the gates are opened."

Gai looked back and forth between me and Jiro slowly several times, staring into our eyes intently before he nodded and backed up several feet. "I understand, friend Jiro, friend Grey, but you must promise me that you will allow me to be the first to test this seal. It would be most unyouthful if someone were to come to harm that had not trained to handle their power. Do I have your words?"

Both of us nodded our assent and Gai grabbed both of our shoulders. "Well then, my most youthful friends! I first discovered the gates when I was fighting Hyuuga Yokuta during the second stage of my chunin examination he began the most unyouthful attack of sealing my tenketsu, believing the power of my youth were based solely on my magnificent chakra. HA! It was pain as few can imagine, but I fought through it and sent him scurrying back to his team remembering the name Maito Gai!" Gai preened for a moment before frowning and becoming serious once more. "Despite my youth not being dependent upon my chakra a closed tenketsu is still debilitating. I found somewhere safe to meditate and turned a chakra sensory technique in upon myself. Once I found the closed tenketsu it was a matter of forcing the chakra through them again. That was when I found it for the first time! I opened one of the tenketsu in my mind and the force of the opening activated the gate! I felt INVIGORATED! My youth was like never before and my team and I finish that portion of the exam within the hour! It was at that point, when we were waiting for the other teams to join us that I found my over youthful exertions were causing me harm and sought the assistance of a jonin and what I had done was explained to me. Since then I have studied the other gates and the techniques associated with them. I am a genius of hard work and it was only fitting that the hachimon are only safe to use by those who have conditioned their bodies as I have!"

Gai struck his 'Good Guy' pose and showed a lot of pearly white teeth. I saw Jiro's eyebrow twitch but thankfully there was no genjutsu of sunsets or flashing teeth like were displayed in the anime. "So opening the gates is a simple as forcing chakra through the area until it pops open, sort of a reverse to the Hyuuga soft fist style?" The irony, I thought. Gai's hard fist builds to and is heavily supported by his work with the gates and not only is the name opposite, but the technique is as well! "That makes you sound like the yang to the Hyuuga's yin, Maito-senpai!" I said, a shit eating grin splashed widely across my face as I handed him a Tenketsu map and a small brush. I'd marked each of the tenketsu and their related gates on the map and numbered them, but I didn't have any of the details. Gai wrote down what he knew about them; how he opened them, what they did to the body, their dangers; it was alarmingly detailed.

The gate of opening, the first gate, is located in the right hemisphere of the brain and controls the conscious limits on muscle use. When it's operating normally the human body can use their muscles between 15% and 25% effectiveness; a safety feature designed to keep you from shredding your muscles during the course of a normal day or workout. Closing the gate with a Jyuuken strike, if the attack doesn't shred your brain straight out; further limits the body further to 7% to 13% effective use and removes the ability to enhance one's body with chakra; while opening the gate with your own chakra can push the limits all the way up to 100% if you do it correctly, or as low as 50% if you don't.

The Gate of Rest, the second gate, is located in the left hemisphere of the brain and controls the amount chakra you can consciously access. Closing it will cripple your jutsu's strength and control, while opening it will cause them to grow out of control. The special bonus to taijutsu however, is that the increase of energy leaves you feeling energized as if you've recently drunken a gallon of caffeinated corn syrup. The danger of this is slightly harder to figure out than being able to use your muscles to their maximum potential. By the rules of this reality Chakra is the power of life, like midichlorians to the jedi, it's made by all that live and is necessary for life to continue, so what happens if you use too much to continue supporting your life? Reckless use of the first gate can destroy your career and leave you a cripple, but the second might just kill the unwary user outright.

The Gate of Life, the third gate, is located along the inner curve of the spine, right between the shoulder blades and controls the body's ability to heal. When opened the blood vessels expand and the body's natural drive to repair itself goes into overdrive. Now, this sounds like a good thing and since Gai has found that it actually supports healing jutsu when used it genuinely is, but alongside the expansion of the blood veins and capillaries, comes another rush of power through the release of endorphins, driving the user to perform at heights that simply aren't safe.

The Gate of Wound, the fourth gate, is located at the conjunction of the lungs and the diaphragm and controls the user's ability to feel pain. Without pain the empowered martial artist loses sight of their limits and instead of simply reaching their limits, is capable of pushing past them, tearing their muscles and ligaments to shreds if need be because the feeling that warns them to stop is missing.

The fifth gate, that of limit, is slightly more curious. Once this gate is opened, instead of releasing a control upon the body it actually helps the user, increasing the speed at which chakra circulates through the body regenerating itself through the consumption of physical and spiritual energies. According to Gai's research it was this and the next two gates that led the monks of the Rikudo Sennin's time to develop Yin, Yang and Yin-Yang elemental releases.

The Gate of View, located at the center of center of the spiral system of veins and tenketsu that make up the overall system is called the Hara. This sixth gate, when opened, causes a release of spiritual energy that further fuels the Hachimon users abilities. This more than anything about the system amuses me because it suggests that the ancient sages believed a person's soul is in their stomach, rather than their heart, liver or brain as is common in terran cultures. …It also give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'the way to a man's heart is through his stomach'. Yes, women of the world; roll your eyes and proclaim you continued frustration, it really is true…

The seventh gate, Kyoumon, Gate of Wonder, affects each and every individual cell in the body by increasing the amount of physical energy given into the chakra coils causing the body to heat up from overwork and generates a glowing blue green aura of ionized sweat that made Gai famous in the opening sequence of the fourth shinobi world war. Of the seven reusable gates Gai is known to open in desperate situations, this is the one that he has yet to open. It's located at the end of the tailbone, and give a entirely new spin on the term 'pulling it out of your ass' that's often thrown around during reruns of Dragon Ball. And considering each individual gate is tantamount to a slightly less flashy episode of 'screaming-man-boobs'… well.

The eight gate though, that's the kicker. It's called the Gate of Death and not without reason. Sages of the various summoning circles offer that to draw in 'natural' chakra exuded by anything that isn't human and form sage chakra, the body needs to be completely at rest, and the less stress you've put yourself under the better. Even then, however, forming this tri-phased energy is dangerous and potentially fatal. Tens of thousands have tried to master Sen-chakra and died in the attempt while mere hundreds have succeeded. Orochimaru, his experiment Jugo and even his lieutenant Kabuto however have proven this to be false. Senjutsu chakra can be created on the run and even during times of great stress by people who special jutsu, exceptional control, or tailored genetic advantages. The secret of the eighth gate is that it too allows a person to form sage-chakra, pushing their already heightened abilities to near godly proportions. This, however is where the sages got things right. When a martial artist opens the eighth gate, the body, already pushed to the breaking point, calls out for further power and draws in natural energy; and in the process quite literally tears itself apart. Their cells break down, any tissue their unnatural exertions haven't destroyed shreds and after a few minutes in this state their hearts explode in their chest. It's a horrible way to die, but for the power of an avenging angel, come to smite the bastard who took or would take 'everything' from them, it's a price well paid.

The trouble I see with all of this is that every danger along the path is dependent entirely on the user's motivation to push themselves physically. With each gate you increase the speed and force with which your chakra flows through the body and thus raise the bar for speed, strength, reaction time, regenerative chakra capacity and above all else, careless disregard for your own safety. After all, what ninja or sage has ever used the 'eight celestial gates alignment' for anything else but physical prowess? In the entire scope of the manga; none, same with the anime. No one in either that fictional world or apparently this one has ever asked, what would happen if I opened each gate, and then didn't try using it to beat my immediate enemy to a greasy smear on the pavement?

In all honesty, maybe the ancient sages who discovered this hair-brained technique did; I actually think that may be how they discovered sage chakra to begin with before deciding to learn a safer way to make it. But if so, then nobody has paid attention long enough for the concept to survive into recent memory.

That is… no one until now…

That being said, I'm still incredibly leery of opening the eighth gate; regenerative yang seal or not. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but that whole death thing just doesn't sit very well, you know?

! #$^&*()

It's a truly crushing feeling when you finally meet some of your favorite celebrities and realize that they're jailbait. Now granted, I've only just turned 18 today, but sitting here at Kukichi's dango stand before work, looking at Mitarashi Anko and Kurenai Yuuhi as thirteen year olds. No matter how interested their hormonal little minds may be interested in boys there's still the fact that they're little kids and I despise pedophiles. It is nice to see Anko happy though, I can't imagine what it must have been like to have some you cared about as much as the manga suggested Anko cared for Orochimaru use you like a disposable test subject. I wonder if I can do a little something about that… A protective seal maybe, something to keep the creepy serpent from being able to bite her? Throwing my remaining stick of candied rice dumplings into the trash, I walk out of the little café and head for Naga's.

As I make my way to the ink shop I ponder briefly the state of my life right now. I've got a full time job painting and charging seals to maintain our stock, I'm using a clone to build a grand piano in my apartment, we're about to seal Gai as a proof of concept, and I'm also double timing my work at the shop with building my chakra control and jutsu repertoire and now I'm even considering taking on charity projects for fictional characters to save them from theoretical future tragedies... Odin bless, I need a girlfriend. I've been avoiding the issue because I don't want to become attached to this place, but if I keep picking up projects like this I'm fairly certain I'll go insane.

If I ever do get back though, I will miss all of the stuff I've learned to do here. I've gotten pretty good at healing the constant cuts incurred as part of my job, devised several blood based ninpou so I don't pass out in the middle of sealing's, and am developing my ability to sense chakra on a conscious level for Jiro's seal deconstruction lessons and now for Gai's Eight Gates technique. Most of all though, I'm going to miss levitating everything with chakra strings, of all the control exercise I've learned it's by far the most useful and definitely the most habit forming.

Lost in thought I reach Jiro's unnervingly quickly and push open the workshops back door. "Nami?"

Sitting there at the table, her hair pulled back in a low pony tail and wearing goggles is Naga Nami, my bosses daughter. In her hands is the engraving knife, it's tip glowing white hot, and another bar of bluish chakra metal. I pat the one on my hip and stare for several seconds before laughing.

"Oh, hello, Grey-san." She says, looking up startled. "Ano… I had not expected you so early, and look, you make me mess up my engraving!" she pouted, showing me a line marring her normally perfect sealwork.

"Um… Nami-chan, it's seven ten, I'm actually late for work. How long have you been here?"

Her face pinked slightly. "I… uh… couldn't sleep." She said, holding up the metal rod. "I kept having dreams. I think this might be important, somehow."

That took me aback. "Important how?" I asked, cutting my finger and started twisting my hands into signs.

"I don't know" she said turning back to the metal and smoothing out the gash "it was just a feeling. How are you coming on learning about Gai's gates?"

Finishing the last sign I watched as a small stream of blood flowed out of the cut before it sealed. "I'm thinking of using a seven symbols seal around a priority binding seal for the eighth attached to the forearm and keyed to the users chakra" I replied as the small globe of blood began expanding as my chakra fed into the jutsu. "Sort of like a wheel switch, but for the gates instead of a circuit."

"Just remember to mind your rune words. Most of the trouble you keep having is your sloppy pairings." She said, igniting her newly finished light saber. "You take everything too literally. It's like saying 'chakra paper fill release fire expand' as opposed to 'fill the tag with chakra to be released as a fireball.' Both will make a working explosive tag, but one will waste chakra while the second will be a pure conversion." I've noticed that she's always much more confident when she's explaining the nature and meaning of seals to me. Right now she's smiling calmly and dancing around, listening to the hum on her sword as I fill a bucket with fresh blood for today's project.

I blush and look away, returning to my work. Jiro would probably kill me if I ever put the moves on his daughter. "So," I said, trying to make conversation "Do you know why your father decided to go with sealing Gai as our proof of concept instead of going with one of my blood clones?"

"Partly because of honor, you two did promise Gai you would seal him first to make sure it was safe." Nami replied distractedly as she moved into a reversed grip and started another dance.

"And the rest?" I asked, coaxing the blood in the bucket to run up a thread of chakra and move around to draw a fire seal on a piece of paper before dropping it back into the bucket.

Nami's smile became tight as she paused briefly in her movements and looked at me. "Because he's worried about you."

"What! Why?" I exclaim turning around to face her fully.

"Because," Jiro said, walking into the room "There's entirely too much feedback from those things. There's a reason nobody uses them. They're worse than shadow clones and without your other jutsu they'd be useless on the battlefield."

"But master Jiro-san, I never go to battle fields, I hardly even use proper training grounds. All of my clones are dismissed by me, and the multi-perspective thing is actually pretty cool!"

Wait, maybe I should explain. Remember back when I told you about ripping off all of those techniques from the Konoha library? One of the scrolls was an old dusty thing that probably hadn't been opened in twenty, thirty years or more even. The Chibunshin, or blood clone, was an attempt by some shinobi nearly a hundred years ago to fix the problems with shadow clones disappearing after a single decent strike. After all, why waste effort on such a dangerous clone technique when it can't even take a hit like a basic elemental version could? What he developed was the Chibunshin, for a pint of blood and half of their chakra the caster could make a solid copy of themselves that was just as strong, fast and intelligent as they were, would transmit sensory information back to the caster and take anything up to a killing blow without breaking the connection. As an added bonus for infiltration specialists the killed clone wouldn't dispel upon 'death' but rather only upon the original users signal so it could be used to fake one's own death.

From my own experiences with the clone it's pretty basically like I'm in two places at once.

That's actually what's caused a fair few arguments between me and my boss, including this one. See, unlike shadow clones where you get their memories and experiences as they dispel; if you use one of these clones, you quite literally feel everything that happens to the clone, seeing everything simultaneously from their perspectives alongside your own as it's happening. You get the taste of food as they eat it, the intellectual challenge of reading a new book or scroll despite not holding it in your hands, the rush of sex you're not exactly involved in and even the pain of receiving a wound or the shock of an enemy ninja delivering a death stroke. Jiro is worried that if I seal one of my clones as the seal test and it dies in some horrible fashion it will traumatize my untrained ass and, as he says 'he'll have to waste another year breaking in some snot-nosed academy dropout who doesn't know a paper bomb from a storage seal'. If I didn't know he was genuinely concerned for me that _certainly_ would have made me feel loved…

"And if all it did was make you look like a schizophrenic chipmunk I'd be content to laugh at you for choosing such a stupid technique."

"Then why can't I use it on Gai at least? That way if the seal fucks up we won't lose him in my place!"

Jiro huffed. "Gai could handle anything that might go wrong, and besides, I'm the one doing the sealing, not you. There'll be nothing wrong with it."

"I'm not so much worried about the sealing. All three of us have double and triple checked it besides which my work is always functional. I'm more worried about what happens after. Whether or not it will let Gai, or anyone really, go to the seventh gate without undue harm. Besides which, using a blood clone would even allow us to test out the eighth gate! No need to worry about dying for the use of something when a clone is fully capable."

"And we're still not sure a clone would be capable."

"Why shouldn't it? Hyuuga Hizashi couldn't tell it was a clone tending the counter when he came in last week!"

Jiro turned to me slowly. "You've been using a clone to tend your shifts on the floor?"

"And to do my shopping, and to do more research at the library plus a dozen other projects I've taken up since moving here, all the while I'm in the back room building the inventory. I think it's actually helping my chakra because I've been feeling it coming faster since I started keeping them around. And it's not like I'm skipping out on floor duty, Master Jiro-san, my clone jutsu still makes me suffer through the experience in real time. They're not so much duplicates of me as me being in multiple places at once."

Jiro narrowed his eyes at me and I could see he was reevaluating things. "How many do you have active right now?" he asked sharply.

"I usually only have two up at any one time, it's too distracting otherwise, right now there's one talking produce quality with Kuakini-san at the market and the second is walking Gai-senpai over here. They're about five minutes out I think."

"Alright then, Nami? Let's get to painting." The girl nodded and depowered her seal-script light-saber. I grabbed the scroll and bucket of blood and Jiro opened the door to the cellar.

The cellar, as you can imagine, is a large stone room that spans the length and breadth of the store. Normally the place is full of cleanly labeled stacks of tabs, piles of Sumi and enormous reams of paper in varying qualities and stiffness. However, whenever Jiro is contracted to do a major sealing large amounts of room are often needed to write everything in freshly blooded ink before it can be transferred onto the host. Therefore, last night's assignment was for me to clear everything away into an inventory scroll. An inventory scroll, as you can imagine by the name, is a specially plotted set of carrier seals drawn onto a series of scrolls all sealed within each other. The first scroll is general categories, containing carrier scrolls for things like, ink, paper, blood, stored chakra and finished seals; then the ink seal has another scroll that expands upon the details with inks made from plant ash, animal ash or oils. Unsealing the oils compartment reveals a final scroll detailing each individual type of oil used before you can finally unseal the sumi itself or whatever you were looking for in the inventory.

Regardless, the cellar was currently spotless and it was time to start painting. We spread the scroll out in the center of the floor and Nami and Jiro each took a side. Twisting my hands through a series of seals I levitated the blood and separated it into two globes that I manipulated to follow the two masters around so they could dip their brushes constantly and I could get some control practice in while I waited, excluded from working on my own invention.

Zoning out slightly I let the sensory input from my other clones take over my primary focus. At the prompting they immediately floated forward from the back of my mind and I was simultaneously debating coffee versus tea with Hinako-kun at the Kou market place and opening the door to the ink shop for Maito Gai.

"We're down there Maito-senpai," I said, gesturing to the trapdoor "I hope you don't mind blood."

"Yosh!" Gai replied solemnly. "Blood is the life of a shinobi. While it is to be avoided, those who cannot abide it turn swift to other pursuits." I smiled at him and ducked down the hatch to join my bosses and original body. Gai followed soon after and I watched him flinch slightly as he took notice of me sitting in the middle of the room, streams of blood leading to two large globes of the stuff and the room liberally painted in it.

"Do you need some water Gai-senpai?" I asked with a smug grin. "You look pale."

"I did not realize you were a shinobi of the leaf." He said, offering me a look of respect.

"I'm not" I replied, my grin widening further "I'm just Jiro-sama's shop boy."

"But then… this most youthful display?"

"I live in a city full of warrior mages," I replied raising an eyebrow at him "what kind of loser would I have to be if I couldn't pick up a thing or two? Despite your self-appointed monikers of spy, saboteur and assassin you're not exactly discrete. Running around public training grounds in strange and often colorful costumes, shouting the names of your techniques and playing so casually with the forces of reality? Warriors and magicians are what you are and I… I am your number one fan."

Gai stood there for several moments watching as Jiro and Nami finished the sealwork we were painting across the floor and considered my words. "You are the one they speak of in the village then?" He asked calmly. "The foreigner who put the Yamanaka in such high demand?" I looked at him in confusion. "The Yamanaka clan have become flooded with shinobi wishing to speed their training by trading skill and techniques among their team through the blond clans minds. It has been most profitable for them and deeply intriguing besides. I myself have been offered high A rank payments for my style on six occasions!"

"…Really?"

"YOSH!"

"Huh."

"Heh," came a third voice as Jiro walked up to join us, whipping his hands on a cloth "I told you if you didn't watch out you were going to become a village treasure, kid; and if this sealing goes right, well hell, your reputations going to become pretty much unmanageable. Won't be long before the other villages start handing out missions to abduct you; Kumo's done it often enough for far less! How are you doing Gai? You look nervous."

"Yosh! It is nothing, I am simply not used to seeing so much blood outside of battle. Are all seals like this?"

Jiro looked around and shrugged. "More or less, kid. We usually mix ink into the blood because it holds better on paper than straight blood, but working with seals like this or more recently just around John, you get used to it. Brat's in love with blood based ninpou. That and his chakra strings, flinging everything around like a monkey with a pile of shit."

"Hey! I'm hardly that bad and protest the imagery on principle!" my clone and I cut back in in unison. Jiro's mouth twitched as if to grin but otherwise ignored me.

"Well, undo those bindings on your arms and strip off your shirt, top, jumpsuit… thing. Why do you wear that? And try to say something that doesn't include youth this time."

Gai grinned at him unzipped the suit, shrugging it off his shoulders and tying the arms around his waist. Jiro directed him where to lay down and began drawing the linking lines up the 16 year olds arms and torso. Once he was done with that Jiro placed his hands on the still wet blood on Gai's chest and began channeling chakra into it. At first nothing happened, but then a blue glow began to emanate from the blood painting Gai's arms and quickly spread out to the rest of the drawn symbols, throwing the room into relief. The markings danced briefly with an aurora borealis like glow before stringing themselves together and flowing up and over Gai's skin.

And just like that it was done. The room was clean and free of blood, the cool lights were gone and Jiro was falling back on his butt, panting heavily. I looked over Gai, who was sitting up, his muscles twitching like a horse with an itch. "Yosh! What a bracing feeling!" the ripped beetles reject said, shaking himself before beginning to stretch. I watched him with interest as he went through his calisthenics, observing the patterns the sealing had made on his skin. It was strangely reminiscent of a tigers markings only much more uniform.

Me and my clone looked at each other before the other me nodded and went to fetch master Jiro some food and water. The sealing had apparently taken it out of him. "Gai," I said, walking up to him "how are you feeling? No soreness? Limitations in your motion? Still have good control of your chakra?" Gai looked at me for a second and then somehow managed to flip from a sitting position to walking on the ceiling in what appeared to be a single motion.

"I feel most youthful" he said "though my chakra is a little low for all that I have not used it yet today."

"That's supposed to happen" I said with a nod as I moved toward him. "I'm pretty sure we explained this, but the seal is designed to drain your chakra to 80% of your working capacity and store it as yang chakra in a secondary chakra reservoir. Then, any time the seal senses damage the healing energy will be released to the specific spot you were injured and direct it on how to heal you. Our hope is that when you open your gates the chakra flow through the seal will allow you to heal well enough that using the gates will take much longer to hurt you, thus increasing the time and benefit you gain from using them while dramatically reducing your overall recovery time. As a bonus constantly resting at less than your body's natural reserves will activate your body's natural effort to replace your chakra forcing your capacity and regeneration to grow at an accelerated rate." I unseal a Kunai from one of my wrist seals and hand it to him ring first. "A good first test to see that it's working would be a small cut across your palm."

Gai nodded before looking to confirm with Jiro and Nami. I tried to suppress my disappointment at not being trusted. When Gai received his reassurances he brought the blade down against his palm, spilling a sizable splash of blood across the floor. We all watched in anticipation as the wound began to give off a golden light and the crimson flow from his hand slowed and then reversed direction, sealing the break quickly enough to watch.

"It was a success" Nami spoke quietly, her voice cutting through the still air. "Even if it does not perform as we hope it will still offer a great advancement to our village, speeding the growth of powerful bodies and chakras!"

I shivered suddenly. "Why do I get the feeling that this isn't going to end up being a good thing?"

Jiro laughed nastily. "Because you're beginning to understand just how much work you've bought yourself."

"The Ryo should be worth it though." Nami cut in. "For a sealing this large we usually charge a pretty penny and that will certainly limit the number of people coming to us for this seal. Gai shall be our advertisement and as people see how he heals in battle the word shall spread. High level ninja love to talk and show off to their friends in battle, but are generally quite reserved at home so it is unlikely we will be flooded with orders. What you should be more worried about is the possibility that Minato-kun will have you conscripted when this comes to his attention."

"Not nessiscarily, Nami." Jiro rumbled "With the amount of work the two of us put into cleaning up the gaki's seal we could easily convince him it was our own and keep him here."

I stood there looking back and forth between the two of them. "Not that I'm unappreciative, but why would you do that? As thankful as I am that I'm not down in T&I with Ibiki or locked up in konoha general's psyche ward, I'm still at a loss as to why you keep sticking your neck out for me at all."

"Heh, the brat's smart, I'll give him that" Jiro grunted. "We should talk about this once we're sure Gai can use his gates effectively though. Maito?"

Maito Gai was standing there arms folded his chin in one hand and looking thoughtful. "The thought strikes me as most unyouthful, but given my previous interactions with Master Jiro-san I feel he might be keen to stroke the fires of your youth personally to prove that it was his own youth that made the Hokage such a splendid ninja, and not the great Sannin Jariya."

Everybody looked at Gai in stunned silence. It was easy to forget that the boys comical persona was really just that, a façade to hide how he managed to become a Jonin during his early teens using little beyond his, admittedly impressive, martial abilities.

"Huh…" I replied, scratching the back of my head. "That… strangely makes me feel more comfortable about all of this." I looked at the two Naga's. "Doesn't that feel… I don't know, backwards somehow? Being comforted by a trusted persons selfish intentions to use you?"

Jiro huffed and rolled his eyes while Nami came over and smacked me across the back of the head. "If everybody is done acting like schoolgirls plotting to date the same boy we should see how Maito-kun's abilities react to his new seal."

! #$%^&*()

Murphy's Law of malign probability states that anything with the potential to happen invariably will and is more likely to happen if, and when, it is most inconvenient. In certain circles Murphy is revered akin to a dark of petty god and the phase that comes up most often is that Murphy is not to be mocked or tempted to act on your behalf.

Five days ago, Nami tempted Murphy on my behalf.

Gai's sealing was an enormous success, the seal worked as specified and allowed the psychotic, squirrelly teen to use the first stage of his eight gates release, the forward lotus, for nearly an hour before he began to suffer unduly from its effects. Testing it again several days later showed him able to use the third gate of life for a little over half an hour, thought that may have been from the gates own tendencies towards attempting to heal it's user.

Regardless, it worked and Gai's growth was already visible, if small, something that should have taken weeks normally, not days.

Naturally you can hardly expect a teenager not to show off when they get a new toy or reach some notable achievement, I know I certainly do, and Gai is no different. As his 'eternal rival' is Hatake Kakashi, prized and only surviving student of the fourth Hokage, Gai's challenge to the silver haired technique thief caught the bored leaders attention.

Gai FLATTENED Kakashi in their 'friendly spar', his Sharingan unable to keep up with Gai's new speed and endurance, but lost his shirt, thus showing off his new tiger striped look. Kakashi was fascinated by Gai's apparent ability to heal while they fought and completely unprepared for his being able to hold the gates beyond what he had previously believed the green clad man to be capable.

Minato on the other hand was more interested in the seal work adorning Gai's body.

"So, you're the one who gave my old sensei the earth seal." The trench coat clad blond said, moving out from behind his desk to pace around me slowly. As he moved behind me the Namikaze pulled down my collar and fingered the black mark on my neck. "Naga-sensei refined it, that much is obvious, his fingerprints are all over it, but I'm more interested in who gave it to you."

I looked into the man's blue eyes confused.

"Don't try to pull the clueless act on me, kid. There aren't that many seal masters on the continent and anyone who studies quickly becomes familiar with the work of the others. The style is one I recognize, but can't place and nobody gets as good as my reports claim you are in six months of study in a public library. Who are you working for?"

"With all due respect, Yondaime-san, my only employer is your old teacher, Naga Jiro." I replied with a calm I certainly did not feel.

"Bullshit." The blond replied, slamming a kunai into the wood of his desk and turning to me. "I'm interrogating you here, now and in this manner as a favor to my old sensei, would you rather be down in Torture and Interrogation with Harumi Kei?"

"I'd rather not be here at all, but the work you might be recognizing is Senju Tsunade's and Ishimaru Goya's. Tsunade-sama invented the medical portions and Goya-senpai pioneered the physical enhancement bindings I used. Both can be found in the Konoha Public Library. I just put them together like a jigsaw. I was working on cleaning the whole thing up when Masters Jiro and Nami found out what I was working on."

Minato looked at me for several long minutes before stretching his hand out to catch a scroll that dropped for what I can only assume was an ANBU guard hiding well beyond my detection in the open ceiling rafters.

"You know we've been building a profile on you?" the Hokage asked. "All ninja villages do on people who display any sort of shinobi training or other interesting activities." He raised the scroll he was reading slightly and continued. "This report offers that you came into the village displaying a civilian chakra level and no discernible shinobi training. That means you're either an exceptionally good infiltration specialist or a previously untrained genius from a deceased clan looking for a place to belong. It further notes that you managed to charm my sensei into taking you on as an apprentice which in itself is no mean feat and reportedly harassed Yamanaka Tsuki into teaching you nearly a dozen chakra control exercises in under an hour."

He lowered the scroll and looked directly at me again. "That the experience prompted her to make a business out of doing this for other Konoha shinobi, offering us a way to swiftly increase our effective strength and is one of the primary reasons I've offered you leniency thus far. I knew full well Jiro-sensei didn't send you to that Library."

He raised the scroll and continued reading. "The report goes on to state that you have a high level of intelligence, 4.5 on our rating system, but possess a strength, speed, taijutsu and genjutsu rating of 1 and stamina and ninjutsu of 2. Your seal knowledge is what worries me though; you've been picking things up too fast. Your average ninja takes year to be able to copy their own seals and power them; exceptional cases months, but you've been making seals almost since you got here; modifying existing ones and even creating new ones entirely from scratch. That's not the kind of thing someone just picks up."

"Maybe you should outsource?" there was a flash and my head was screaming, my vision white. When it cleared I was up against a wall with the Yondaime's cold blue eyes boring into my own as I tried not to shit myself.

"This is not a laughing matter. Stop trying my patience and tell me who you are and why you are here."

"I already have, sir. You're either going to believe me or kill me, but I'm fairly certain if you were going to do the latter you wouldn't have tried talking to me first, favor or no favor."

Minato let me go and I slid to the floor and stayed there. "Heh, the first and second Hokage would have executed you already and the third would have simply sent you to Torture and Interrogation, but You're right kid. First and foremost I want to determine if you're a threat to this village and if you're not…" he offered me his hand "If you're not I want to hire you."

I looked at his hand for several seconds wondering if he was going to break mine of do some other crazy scary ninja thing before taking it. "I work for Master Naga, Yondaime-san, but we are a business and we're always happy to take commissions." He nodded and I took his hand.

"Regardless, I'm going to be keeping a close eye on you." The blond said pulling me up.

I stood up, nodding. "Would showing you how to finish your Rasengan be any help in gaining me leniency?" I asked casually.

Minato raised an eyebrow. "And what would you know about that?" he asked, holding up a palm and igniting the trademark vortex of energy above it.

"I know that it's a chakra control excersize you developed off studying the Kyuubi's Biju-doma. I also know that you consider it unfinished because you're having a hard time adding elemental manipulation into the process."

"And you know how?" he asked, brow raised and voice dripping with skepticism.

"I don't even know what my elemental affinity is, or if I even have one" I shrugged "but I know that adding wind into a spinning chakra fields that has energy rubbing against itself in a hundred different directions is a bad idea."

Minato's eyes narrowed and he sat down on his desk. "Go on."

"The problem you're facing is that you're trying to do too many things at once and it's taxing your brain. It's like trying to look right, left and behind you all at the same time; only without being a Hyuuga. First, you're mixing your physical and spiritual energies to make chakra, then you're bringing that chakra into your hand, adding very advanced shape manipulation to it and finally trying to alter the mix of your chakra to lend it elemental properties. It's too much for one brain to handle and on top of that you're inventing the technique with only a vague sense of direction in what you want it to become. The solution is actually fairly simple. If you can't spare enough attention to the task by yourself, bring in someone you can trust, someone who know as much as you do about the problem and can work with you flawlessly before teaching you exactly what they learned in the experience."

"And I don't suppose you know who this perfect person is?" he asked with a bit of a smirk, as if expecting me to suggest myself.

"Yeah, actually. You take a leaf out of your wife's book and use a shadow clone. Several of them if you can manage it." I've got to admit, I felt proud of myself at that moment, the man actually looked dumbfounded. Genius, golden boy of Konoha and potential savior of the world and I'd caught him flatfooted. "What did you expect me to say? I use clones for everything, they're dead useful. Especially when you want to get out of work or dodge some big scary ninja who's decided they want to interrogate you and place contact seal trackers on your body."

"Perhaps, but like you said, you don't have any elemental abilities and a shadow clone would have dispelled when I slammed you against that wall or cut that gash on your jaw. We've noticed your blasie use of clones, though how you ever had the chakra to handle them has always eluded my ANBU." Minato returned easily, smiling as if he was enjoying a game of shogi.

"It also seems to have evaded your ANBU that I use Ninpou rather than standard ninjutsu or kinjutsu. Blood clones can take a beating but suffer the supposed weakness of forcing the user to experience things from multiple simultaneous viewpoints. A distracting liability in battle or so I'm told."

"So," Minato said, flipping one of his kunai up to catch it on it's point "you wouldn't mind if I killed you now?"

I tilted my head sideways. "Mind? Absolutely. Every clone though the connection would feel my dead as would the original, I'd do my best to dispel and leave this massive bloodstain on your carpet before the blade hit me. That would however alert the real me that it's definitely time to scamper; something that, friend or enemy, you've professed to not wanting."

"Indeed. Master or apprentice your seals are a definite boon to our village and I'd rather have you here than elsewhere, but like you said, you're a civilian. How do you expect to get out of the village? If Internal Security wasn't already watching your other bodies we definitely would be now that you've explained your technique to us."

"But why would you do that? I haven't even had time to explain to you the full dangers of what you want to do to that Rasengan or how to fix it yet." I shot back smiling.

Minato relaxed again and spread his arms wide. "I'm listening."

"I'll need your promise that I'm not to be harmed first." I said, with a brow raised as I lifted myself from the ground. "I'm not stupid you know."

"Alright on my hono…" The Hokage began, but stopped at a puff of chakra smoke.

"Just your mark," I replied, handing him a heavily sealed paper with some plain writing on it "In blood."

"You came here expecting this conversation?" the blond asked, reading over my very brief terms.

"No" I said with a shrug "I just a very good seal master. Did you know that cloning a carrier seal will allow you to put things in one end and take them out the other? I've had carrier seals grafted onto my writs for even longer than I've had my clone technique and when you experience things simultaneously from a dozen perspectives or more things sometimes get a bit confusing. I accidentally sealed something I'd bought in the market and then unsealed it at the shop because I was hungry. After what happened hit me it didn't take long to figure out. I started writing this seal in the shop when you offered me your hand a few minutes ago."

I watched as the fourth fireshadow reviewed my terms and the seals I'd written on the paper. It was a variation on the standard summoning contract pledges. In a summoning contract, you pledge yourself to join the Higherarchy of summons and serve the boss as any other member of the summon species. In exchange for that and a per-use sacrifice of power and blood you could call summons to your aid with what turned out to be a transdimensional beacon technique. The summoning itself was actually apart of the writing in the scroll, not the handsigns used to call your reinforcements. But I'm getting away from topic, within the sealwork of the contracts were a variety of pledge binding matricies, added to the basic scroll upon the agreement of the current boss to come at the call of the scrolls pledges. I had a dozen of them open in the shop to the annoyance of Jiro Nami who had been playing around with their light sabers at the time.

"For a kid of your intelligence your terms are incredibly basic." Minato's voice cut across my musings. "All you've asked for is that I can't call for you to be sent to T&I or killed. You've left open the options for me to torture or kill you personally or for any random konoha shinobi to do it on their own."

"Hey, I only had a few minutes to draft the seal. Making my guarantees a little too basic is hardly something to scoff at. Besides, I'd have to contract every ninja individually to really stop them from killing me on their own merits."

"Fine, there are enough holes in this document I'm comfortable signing." With a flick his opened up his thumb, healed it and pressed the bloody print into the paper. "How about you get to explaining now?"

I took back the contract and sealed it into my wrist again. "Well, the problem with making your Rasengan a wind technique is just like I hinted before. You're trying to spin wind charka against itself in a hundred different directions at once. It's going to be spitting microscopic wind blades absolutely everywhere. Hold one of these things for more than a few seconds and your arm will turn to jelly or disintegrate entirely. Honestly considering how much of a genius you are I'm surprised you didn't figure it out already." Then I tilted my head, to the side considering. "Or perhaps you did, and that's why you've been working on this thing for years and haven't been able to finish it…" I looked at him and saw the smirk there, he had figured that out, and probably could do the elemental version, but was struggling with the personal safety issue. "Regardless, shadow clones would be a good option for using the Futon: Rasenshuriken whether you've yet to learn or just want to use it safely. The other option is to learn how to throw it. The two methods I know could do this are chakra strings like I use" I said, forming a small rasengan nearly a foot from my hand and moving it around on a chakra string "or learning sage mode like your second sensei Jariya. Their toad-fu teaches the user to throw energy around in lieu of physical strikes and would offer you both the training needed to toss your Rasengan around and the durability needed to form it without taking damage."

I looked up to see Minato glaring at me fiercely. "How in the shinigami's name do you know how to do that? I invented that technique and I certainly didn't teach you."

"You'd never believe me if I told you, Master Jiro certainly didn't. As to the technique, I use it as a control exercise. I still don't have the power to use it in combat and probably wouldn't use it if I did."

"Then you'll have no problem with me forbidding the technique." He said, crossing his arms.

I frowned. "I suppose not… I guess this means you don't want me using it to keep my control up?" When he continued to glower at me I sighed, slumped and let go of the chakra.

"So, how did you learn it." He asked, as he moved back to sit behind the large oak desk.

"From reading about your son."

Minato snorted. "I don't have a son."

"You might want to take that up with Kushina." I replied dryly. "It's only February, but if I'm right on the year she'll be testing positive on a pregnancy test and you'll have a son on October tenth. Then again, hell, maybe the aggravation I've cause you means he'll be born later, or not at all, or a girl, or twins. Shit, with this world there's a pretty good chance they'll be puppies. Kiri has fish people after all."

"What in the hell are you talking about?" the man asked, giving me the strangest look.

"Well, you know how Kirigakure has the sanbi no isobu? Big ugly turtle crab thing with three armadillo tails? They've had it for a lot longer than Konoha has held the Kyuubi and they've got fish people among their living weapons corps."

"Yes, yes, I know this. I fought a battle alongside one of them in the last war, he looked like a puffer fish and had this massive chakra eating sword. What's your point?"

"Well… your wife is the Kyuubi Jinchuriki…"

The mans stared at me silently for several minutes before pinching the bridge of his nose. "This is what I get for talking with friends of Maito Gai" he muttered before heaving a massive sigh. "…And just for that you're going on the active duty mission roster. I'll be assigning you D-rank missions… personally."


End file.
